


Stardust Flush

by poodles



Category: Homestuck
Genre: M/M, also featuring equius the surprisingly prominent for not being very important to the story, bloodswap, in which karkat cries about relationships a lot and kanaya pats him patiently on the back
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-26
Updated: 2014-06-13
Packaged: 2018-01-26 14:36:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 26,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1691840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poodles/pseuds/poodles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You and Eridan had been good matesprits, before you left Alternia. Really good. Stardust kind of good. Like in the old folktales, as though an ancient star exploded and scattered, and all the cosmic ashes from that one star solidified into you and this scrappy psiionic kid. And you were being pulled back together by fate. You were never going to break up, you were going to grow up to be Karkat Vantas, Revolutionary King, Badass Extraordinaire and Eridan was going to be that guy who was still dating you.</p><p> </p><p>     Neither of those things happened. You are Karkat Vantas, Extremely Adequate Threshecutioner, Faithful Servant of the Empress, Long Will She Live. And Eridan’s gone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fanfiction is for a bloodswap AU, and instead of artfully weaving the blood colors of the trolls into the narrative i'm just going to tell you the important ones up front. Karkat's got olive blood, Kanaya's got indigo blood, Eridan's mustard. A more complete list can be found at the end of this chapter. 
> 
> If you are interested, the bulk of the content of this AU can be found here: http://poidkea.tumblr.com/bloodswap

            It's been a while since you've been home. A couple seasons off planet, at least. You wonder idly if your moirail’s big hive will still feel like home, but you figure, as long as she’s around, who gives a fuck? You pick at the strange, carpeted bus seat of your dingy public transport prison, and wait for Kanaya to text you back.

            Your threshecutioner flaysquad is off duty until the council on Yoquon decides how exactly they want to use their resources. As a result, select members of said resources get sent on restorative leave. You don't know how long you have this time around, although you'd say at least a couple months. No one is getting their shit together any time soon on Yoquon. The council won't even begin to bring up the subject for at least a couple weeks, the whole fucking state you were in is traffic jammed with some… pointless power struggle, internal affairs or some shit. You kind of zoned out on that particular debriefing, but nobody could possibly blame you, Yoquon is such a maze of backstabbing and usurping that it's hard to know who's in charge for more than five minutes at a time. It’s a disgusting mock-up of a government, really.

            But as fucking wasteful as sending your incredible squad off to a shithole like Yoquon is, all you really care about at this particular moment is that you get a break. It’s common practice, if a squad isn't being marched off to the fields immediately, that the sergeant is sent home to get his ass papped and his head sorted so he can come back and make rational decisions. And since your squad isn’t seeing any action any time soon, those goons get handed over to someone else for drills and you get to lounge around in the arms of your moirail for some blissfully undetermined amount of time. Who cares if you are more put together than half the Yoquon council, for once the government is doing something that works for you.

            You've been mindlessly texting back and forth with Kanaya for the last two hours of this godforsaken bus ride. It's crowded and poorly lit and your temperament is not holding up to the challenge. You're not sure how your peers in the threshecutioner corps judged your moirailship with your big indigo terror, but the way they look at you when you’re yelling, you're pretty sure they think she has to spend an hour every night telling you you're pretty just like all the other kids.

            The distance is harder on her, though. You're away a lot, and Kanaya works as CEO of her own landscaping business, which requires an unreasonable amount of interaction with very frustrated, self-righteous flecks of highblood hoofbeastshit. It winds her up so badly, you’d tell her to quit but she loves her scumsucking job. And then Terezi will inevitably coerce Kanaya into navigating high society ballrooms full of straight up assholes for hours on end, without your specialized support. She's still convinced she'll lose it after a bad day at work and try to massacre the whole room, but frankly you think maybe she should stop giving herself such high standards and just terrify the gourd-thumping ghosts out of high society. They could stand to be taught a little humility, and as always, she could stand to let her hair down.

            Of course, that can’t actually happen, that’s a dumb fantasy, you couldn't live with yourself if it played out. Kanaya would be sad and people would be dead. That would be the outcome. So you spend hours on the phone with her, hoping to scold the tension right out of her back, and you force her to stop being a huge square in other ways. Like stopping her from brushing her fangs twice every night and fucking flossing oh my god. She flosses twice a night. You are literally going to hide her floss and force her to deal with it.

            You cannot wait to see her.

            Which reminds you, there's one other person you're hoping to catch sometime on planet. You flip through your phone contacts to find the woman you've been dating flush. It's been a little over a month since you’ve been with Loethe, and you think it's… going alright, actually. You like her a lot, and you’re a solid 75% sure she likes you. Might as well check and see when she'll be on planet. You pause as you leaf through the names. Your thumb hovers over ERIDAN AMPORA, in juvenile all caps, like it's shouting at you. You don’t know why you haven’t deleted him yet. Like he's going to ring you up or something, ask how your day was. You doubt this is even still his number.

            You scroll past his name. You'll delete it later, you've got a girlfriend to ask after. A very nice one, who has never so much as suggested wearing a cape.

            She's been on Yoquon with you, she's sergeant of her own squad, which has been in the same boat as yours for a couple months now. Of course she's being sent home as well, although she doesn't have a moirail to see. (They always sort of hint under the table that single threshes on leave should find themselves a pale one-night stand-in. they can't officially endorse that suggestion, but god do they prefer a sane army.) It turns out, by some small miracle, that Loethe keeps home base on the same planet you and Kanaya settled on. With a pretty short commute, too, she lives in the same city Kanaya works in. You're looking forward to being in a pointedly non-official setting with her. You're not sure you quite want to do the whole meet-the-moirail song and dance yet, but you can at least take her out proper. Dinner and a movie, a walk by the river. Show her you're not all business and gunpowder.

            You find Loethe in your phone and send her a quick hello as the bus lurches and slows. Shoving your phone back in your pocket, you glue your nose to the window, and yes, oh yes, that's the station. A sweeter smog-filled hellscape you have never seen. You squint through distorted plastic bus windows at the heads outside as people around you begin to shuffle their things together and stand. Aaaand…. there, there she is, her horns sticking up over the crowd. Beautiful and terrifying, Kanaya is the image tattooed on your bloodpusher. God, she's huge, you always forget how big she is. It's like she grows a couple inches every time you’re gone, just to spite you. You're going to make her carry you the whole way home. It takes perigees to get off the bus, because everyone hates you and thinks maybe you haven't memorized the shitty bus seat cover pattern yet, but when you finally shuffle off the steps Kanaya bends over to swoop you up. You get your arms around her strong neck and kiss her bony jaw. It's good to be home.

___

            Kanaya drives you home in her scuttlebug. You had always planned to live with Kanaya after you left Alternia, it had taken very little persuasion before she agreed. Your home base hive is grand and white, tall, and as intimidating as staring a behemoth in the flaming snout. It’s also enormous. You think you have a ballroom somewhere? You have a vague recollection of a ballroom. The whole thing is more or less Kanaya’s doing, which you don’t mind. It’s a functional house, however astronomically high the ceilings are. And it’s familiar and stuff you care about is in there, like your moirail, and your movie collection. You don’t go into the gardens behind the hive, though, you’d get lost. That is, in point of fact, is a thing you have done in the past.

            You toss what things you brought with you into your old respiteblock, which is dusty with disuse. You’ll have to replace the sopor in your recuperacoon. You take a moment to glance over your bookshelf and your posters. Oh, fuck yes, your hard copy DVDs. Three of them, like old friends. You pick up _The Switch_. It’s not like you can’t just watch your digital copy any time, but there’s something about holding it that you like. They don’t even make DVDs anymore, you don’t think. Feferi got this off Eekbay for your 7 th wriggling day, back on Alternia. God, she was basically your best friend. Maybe you’ll tell her you still have it next time you catch her online. If you ever get to actually see her again, maybe you’ll make her sit down and watch it with you.

            You don’t bother to wash and refill your recuperacoon. Instead, you settle into Kanaya’s with her for the day, curled into her shoulders and tracing the feathers tattooed on her collarbone. There wasn't really much debate on where you were sleeping, she didn't try very hard to detangle you from her elbows. She breathes deeply and steadily into your hair. It's your favorite of her breathing patterns, it's the one you get when she doesn't want to kill anyone. Not even a little bit. "Do you know how long you're home for?" she asks, and you shrug.

            "Forever," you say. "They'll never take me back, I'll chain myself to your desk. Live off of carpet lint and passing beetles. It will be a sad existence, the Thresh Corps will take a look at me and decide they could do better anyways. I'll be in your personal space forever, an olive stain on your vision. You'll never get laid again."

            "I will just have to use your room."

            "You would barely fit on my platform, you titan," you say. She hums in response. "I guess I'll chain myself to my own desk," you compromise. "I'm assuming you'll come visit me. Bring me some food sometimes."

            "Probably not. I'm a very busy woman, Karkat. Landscapes do not design themselves."

            "I call your bluff!" you say. "I think you are bluffing. Actually, I can never tell when you're joking, Kanaya, because you’re horrible at it. Please tell me you would bring me some saltines or something if I chained myself to a desk."

            "Speaking of you chained up," Kanaya says, completely ignoring your clever jab, "Are you going to have your girlfriend over? Should I have soundproofed your room?"

            "Har har," you say. "But, no, I don't know, she lives on her own, I'll probably just spend time at her place."

            "Oh?” Kanaya says. “Do you not want me to meet her?"

            You groan exasperatedly into her neck. "Is that what I said? Did you hear those words come out of my mouth? My memory must be failing me because I distinctly remember saying none of them."

            Kanaya just taps your back patiently, and ignores you. Which is admittedly a pretty good tactic for handling you. “Karkat," she says, "My hot crossed bun, you've been dating her for at least two perigees. I think you can introduce us without it being weird. Besides, you owe me this, because I never met the last one at all."

            "Which turned out to be a great thing, if you'll remember, because I was dumped very fast. Remarkably fast. I think I am setting new records. Can you call up troll Guinness and-"

            "Do you want to talk about it?" Kanaya says. It’s not strictly moirail territory, relationship issues, but you always liked to dig your nose into her own romantic ventures. And it became habit for her to get her long, manicured fingers into your quadrants as well, even though hers are 100% more likely to inspire the 20th troll chainsaw massacre film. And now you basically have no secrets. As much as you hate to admit it, it’s been helpful. You think all moirails should have to listen to the small problems. There would be fewer large problems if they did.

            When you don't answer, she gently pries you away from her bosom and props you up against the recuperacoon to look at her. "If you think you're going to be dumped again, maybe you should try doing something about it."

            "I'm not going to be," you say. "She likes me, we're fine, I'm not going to fuck this one up, probably."

            "You remember, you don't need serendipity to have a good relationship," Kanaya says. “You can just have one.” You groan at her and sink down, so the soper slime muffles all the shitty sounds that come from your mouth. Kanaya pulls you back up and wipes your face.

            "Yeah, I know," you say. "Thanks, troll Dr. Phil."

            "You’re very welcome."

            “I just think we’ve talked this one out, is all,” you say. “I’ve been doing my best with Loethe, I’m watching out for signs that I’m pushing her away, and I think I’ve been doing fine.”

            “You’ve only been dating her for a couple weeks,” Kanaya says. “Will you do so well when you start to get closer?”

            “I don’t know, I mean, I think we’re already getting closer. I think the best thing to do is just to keep going, for now. Hypothesis: we will never break up, you will eat your words.”

            Kanaya just rolls her eyes. "Karkat, no offense, but you are not as good at this as you think you are. Bring her around sometime before you leave planet, it's at least a good show of faith that you want her in your life."

            "I know, I know," you say. And then, "maybe." She rolls you back onto her shoulder and traps you with her long arms. It's a prison separating you from the rest of the world. Just how you like it.

            After a moment, Kanaya says, "Do you want to talk about Eridan?"

            "Don't _you_ have anything you want to air out?" You say, “I know for a fact you argued with your PA today. How does that make you feel.” She gives you a sharp pap to the head in response. Ok, Karkat is still on the hot spot, wonderful. "Is there anything to say about Eridan?"

            "Maybe not," Kanaya says, combing her fingers through your hair. "It's just been a while since he came up. I was wondering how that was going for you."

            "It hasn't changed. I mean, why would it? There's nothing else to analyze. Do you want to analyze whether or not there’s anything left to analyze? We can do that, check our work three times, and then analyze how we checked our work and so on, spiraling into the infinity of stupid. We can get so deep into the details that we forget it was about Eridan at all, ever. Actually, that sounds great, you start."

            "Karkat-"

            "Kanaya, I'm _working_ on it. We don’t have to connect any of my problems back to Eridan. There is nothing left to uncover."

            Kanaya sighs. "Karkat, you said ‘working on it’ perigees ago, and perigees before that. I just think three sweeps is going to be a little long to be 'working on it'."

            "It's been barely two sweeps. Barely." You’re not really feeling this today. This morning you were going to put your palms all over Kanaya's skin and fix her up, it was going to be therapeutic for the both of you and she was going to be sooo thankful that you were here to save her from herself, at long last. But talking about Eridan gets you nowhere. It doesn't help, it doesn't change anything, and you don't want to get into it this morning. Or ever again, really. You are completely ready to put that entire chapter of your life behind you. You were ready to put it behind you seasons and seasons ago.

            But you end up thinking about it a lot anyways, because you apparently literally cannot stop yourself from being a miserable, self-destructive disgust lump. You and Eridan had been good matesprits, before you left Alternia. Really good. Stardust kind of good. Like in the old folktales, as though an ancient star exploded and scattered, and all the cosmic ashes from that one star solidified into you and this scrappy psiionic kid. And you were being pulled back together by fate. It had been like the universe telling you serendipity was real, you spent your last sweeps on Alternia with Kanaya on one arm and Eridan on the other. Being matesprits with Eridan had been _really hard_ , sure, but every time you pulled through a fight it was like you were a little bit more meant to be. Nothing was really enough of an issue to stop you from liking him, and the stupid jokes he made, the ease with which he deflected the nasty things you said, and the time and effort he put in for you. And God knows why, he stuck to you like glue. You were never going to break up, you were going to grow up to be Karkat Vantas, Revolutionary King, Badass Extraordinaire and Eridan was going to be that guy who was still dating you.

Neither of those things happened. You are Karkat Vantas, Extremely Adequate Threshecutioner, Faithful Servant of the Empress, Long Will She Live. And Eridan’s gone.

            The last time you saw him, you were lightheaded from screaming and he was babbling on, trying to explain himself, you guess, although you hadn’t heard him. It had all been so… _like_ him. But you had never actually thought he'd do anything. You thought he'd just sit at home on his ass grumbling while you and Feferi did your own thing. So you'd yelled--and boy, can you yell--and Feferi had shaken and screamed.

            And then you never saw him again. When you ordered him gone he fled the scene, and by the time you made it around to his house, just before ascension, to figure out where he fit into things now, he was gone. He had packed up and left. No goodbye, no apology.

            But it doesn’t matter. Maybe you don’t have the faith you used to in flush. But it's hardly an issue. It's a non-issue. It's been sweeps, you got a life, you live in a humongous, beautiful hive with your beautiful moirail, and you command the bravest squad you've ever met down the best paths you can carve out for them. You’ve got a pretty girl who wants to make out with you. One day your shitty brain will decide it's had enough and give up holding onto an age-old heartbreak.

            Kanaya nudges your cheek. "Are you with me?"

            "Yeah," you say, "Sorry. I've been traveling for two days and I may have left part of my sponge back on that godforsaken bus."

            "I think that is just an excuse to get out of this feelings jam."

            "Kanaya," you say, propping yourself up a little to look into her eyes, "that is exactly what it is. I have a proposition for you. Let's confront our problems tomorrow." you give her a peck on the lips. "As a change of plans, tonight let's pretend they don't exist. Now put your hand back on my head. Pet my hair. Yes, there you go."

            You shuffle yourself back down towards her rumble spheres, let the slime buoy you, and relax into her touch. You can feel her chest move as she chuckles, and even with whatever exasperation it carries, that means you have won. There will be no more dwelling on things you can't change tonight. Only the deep, steady breathing of your moirail, and, eventually, sleep.

\---

            Loethe turns out to be just two nights behind you, and you make plans to take her out in the city the night after she gets home. You spend admittedly too long researching where to take her, and Kanaya is predictably unhelpful. She does hold you down to give you a haircut, though, which you would resent her for if you didn't look significantly better afterwards.

            "And think about inviting her over," Kanaya reminds you, the evening of. You went out to join her in her greenhouse, bringing her a cup of coffee. She doesn't drink it habitually, but if you make some she's usually happy enough to partake.

            "Get your own matesprit, then you can move as fast as you want," you say. She threatens you with her watering can, you feign surrender and go back to the kitchen.

            Dinner goes well. Loethe looks wonderful, her wiry hair let out of its usual bun. It's unorganized and frames her face and makes her look younger, a little less battle worn. As the night shades lighter, you walk downtown, jumping to talk over each other about being back on planet. What you're going to eat, how late you're going to sleep in, what you missed and what you didn't. She points out all the best shops, and then, more importantly, all the worst ones.

            "I just don't understand cupcake stores," she says, gesturing jerkily to a shop across the street with a striped blue awning. "Cupcakes are the most boring desserts. It's like you want something sort of like cake, but can't bring yourself commit to just eating cake. It’s a dessert for the indecisive, and the weak-willed."

            "How can you hate cupcakes?" you say. "It's exactly like cake! But smaller and more portable! You’re not _settling_ when you eat a cupcake. Can you eat cake while walking down the street? How about while writing a letter? No, it's impossible, professionals have tried and failed. That's why they engineered the cupcake."

            "Do you eat cupcakes while writing letters?" Loethe asks, her eyes crinkling easily with a smile. "I have never seen you write a letter or eat a cupcake."

            "I do both, frequently. Often at the same time. The whole while thanking this great empire that I have the ability to move a pen around meaningfully with one hand, and stuff a miniature cake in my mouth with the other."

            "I just can't believe you are a cupcake man," She says, sighing in good humor. "This is it, the deal-breaker. I knew there would be something wrong with you."

            "Come on, I'm buying you a cupcake, immediately," you say. "I dare you to eat it and not enjoy yourself at all."

            You buy her a cupcake, she eats it in two great bites while using her other hand to give you the finger. "There," you tell her, "Multitasking. Could you be flipping me off right now if you were eating regular cake? Science tells us, no."

            She laughs, and slips her hand into yours. It's cool and calloused from the field. You walk perfectly in stride together, gaits matching up and arms swinging loosely together. The weak sun of your home planet has barely touched the horizon, and has only begun to wash away the deep indigo of the night sky. Is that it? Is your deal-breaker cupcakes? Loethe circles her thumb mindlessly on yours, and in the silence, you search corners for something wrong. You can't think of what you're missing. Loethe has only ever been easy for you.

            "Hey," you say, and Loethe says,

            "What's up, Sarge?"

            "Come over and visit me sometime. I'm not in any big city, but there are some nice things to see. The gardens my moirail keeps are a fucking spectacle."

            "I'd love to," she says, and it sounds genuine. You take a look at her face, she's definitely smiling.

            "You can meet Kanaya," you say, watching for her face to drop. Her smile kind of wavers, and your heart stops, you’re pushing her too fast, but she just nods and says she's looking forward to it. You look back ahead of you. There, easy. You feel astoundingly not like shit. Maybe it's the effect of finally spending a couple days close contact with Kanaya, or maybe you’re capable of having a normal matespritship at long last.

\---

            You tell Feferi you’ve still got _The Switch_. She messages you back with eight ‘ha’s, (which you personally think is too many for the occasion), and reminds you that for her 7 th wriggling day, you sent her an E-card and a promise to ‘PET AN ANIMAL, OR SOMETHING, IF YOU ASK NICELY’. You don’t remember that, but you probably didn’t even follow through—Feferi’s beasts were only good for being unnecessarily underfoot. Feferi doesn’t bring up the beautiful mandolin Eridan found for her, as a joint wriggling day and anniversary gift—he said five sweeps as a moirail was a milestone. You remember it, and you know Feferi remembers it too, because she spent the whole delighted sweep plucking away at the strings. But if there’s anyone who likes talking about Eridan less than you, it’s Feferi.

            Instead, you spend twenty minutes idly reminiscing on old, unused plans you’d made together for social change. Good fuck, did you ever think revolution was going to be simpler when you were on Alternia. Feferi laughs again when you say so, because she always knew it was going to be a bitch. It just took you a little longer to cotton on. Nowhere in the chat log do you discuss Eridan’s old contributions, or lack thereof. He used to suggest a bloody coup, and Feferi used to roll her eyes and try to sit on top of him to subdue him. But neither of you bring it up.

\---

            "Oh, Equius stopped by," Kanaya says, as you scrub the stubborn polish off her claws with a cotton ball. She could do it herself, but you'd spent all yesterday hunched over your husktop, and you like to touch her hands. You like long fingers. Kanaya took you out to the back porch, under the white trellis, where you can see the orchard in the distance. The cool night air is nice on the back of your neck.

            "Equius?" You ask. "What did he want?" You don't see Equius much at all, although you know Kanaya talks to him every so often. Nepeta and Equius are the only other trolls you grew up with who settled nearby you. It was Nepeta’s idea, she’s gone a lot and wanted Equius to know some trolls nearby. The planet she liked was nice enough and you and Kanaya didn’t mind.

            Kanaya shrugs. "He wouldn't say," she said. "I mean, not that he's ever particularly straightforward to begin with. But he wanted you to go visit sometime."

            "What, like, at his hive?" you say. "Is Nepeta there?" you add hopefully. Nepeta never tells you where she is, even when you’re home. You'd love to see her again, though, sometimes you sort of miss the rough way she handles you. Nothing like being casually tackled and slapped on the back so hard you choke.

            "No, last I heard, she's somewhere on the heaths," Kanaya says. You grab for her other hand, and she twists it so you can reach her thumb.

            "Huh," you say. "Well, do you want to go? I guess we should. We can drop by for like… is 15 minutes long enough? He's got to get lonely."

            "I don't think he does, actually," Kanaya says, "I think he prefers to be alone. Maybe. But anyways, I'm not invited, it's just you."

            "What?" You shake your head. You don’t really ‘hang out’, with Equius. Much in the same way you don’t hang out with, say, rocks. “Are you sure?"

            "He was uncharacteristically specific on that point. A little disheartening, to be honest."

            "Oh please," you say. "You talk with him sometimes, don't you? He likes you fine." You bring Kanaya's hand up to kiss her knuckles. "But if you want to talk about it…"

            "No, sorry," Kanaya says. "I know he doesn't mean anything like that by it. But, you know, I just thought—"

            "You thought what?"

            "Nepeta's been gone a long time, and I just thought it seemed a little out of place that he'd only want to see you, is all. And not tell me why. I mean, I know—"

            "Kanaya Maryam," you say, putting down the now soiled cotton ball. "The dearest, whitest lily of my shitty pulsating blood biscuit, if there is one troll in this wasted empire who is not pale for me, it's Equius. I think he'd rather discuss his feelings with a mop."

            Kanaya rolls her eyes and hands you a new cotton ball. "I know," she says, "I know. And I know you wouldn't."

            "That's my girl," you say, and you get to work on the last of the paint.

\---

            Kanaya has to remind you, but eventually you shoot Equius a text and head over. You wouldn’t bother texting for anyone else, but Equius is always significantly less pleasant if you surprise him. He tends to keep to himself. He and Nepeta live even farther from civilization than you and Kanaya do, in a one-story hive that stretches out forever. And it is chock full of antlers and skins and weird hunting trophies, and like, jars full of eyes. There’s a billiards room, which is so stupid, you know for a fact that Nepeta never plays hit-some-little-spheres-with-a-long-stick-strategically. She just keeps a bunch of cool rocks and shit that she’s found in there with the game table. There’s one shaped sort of like a bulge. Their hive is very overwhelmingly Nepeta, despite the fact that she only spends a handful of perigees a sweep home.

            There may be a basement too, actually, but you don't have proof of that. You guess it's mostly that you think of basements as Equius' natural habitat.

            You wonder idly as you knock on the grand wooden door if Equius is going to murder you. Or maybe you just left something here? He opens the door and looms over you, uncharacteristically large for a red blood, or a crazy blood, or whatever he is. Maybe he's big because of he’s full of cherry kool-aid? Why are all your friends so big. You need to find a way to hang out with Feferi again, she was about your height, it was incredible.

            He's sweating, but there's nothing so out of place about that. "Hey, Equius," you say, and he nods.

            "Vantas." He gestures a welcome inside, so you step past him into the hall, and make your ritual eye contact with the wolf's head hanging across from you. Nepeta is so weird.

            "So," you say. "What's up?" Equius looks around uncomfortably. "Uh," you say, "Should I be worried?"

            "I think you'd better just come and see," Equius says. "I don't think there's any way to preface this appropriately."

            Well, you're not dead, although nor are you in repossession of a long forgotten paperback. You follow Equius across a couple cholerbearskin rugs, down the long hall, and into the den.

            And there, awkwardly sunken into a furry beanbag chair, is unmistakably Eridan Ampora. He's a little taller than you remember, his shoulders a little broader, his hair dyed a little less yellow and his face a little notched, but you would recognize him if he'd gone under a train. You stop in the doorway, and Equius falls back behind you. Eridan is clearly uncomfortable, his eyes darting around like he doesn't know where to look. They meet yours eventually, and you stare him down like the threshecutioner privates when they step too far out of line. He clears his throat. "Uh, hi," he says.

            "Equius," you say, and Equius shuffles back into view. "Can you get me something to drink."

            "Do you want—"

            "Alcohol," you say. "I want alcohol. In case you need reminding, Nepeta keeps some in her study desk. Get that if there's nothing else."

            You hear Equius clod off towards the kitchen, and you lower yourself onto a leather couch. Eridan Ampora, sitting on Nepeta's beanbag. And you thought you’d seen it all. He’s nervous, and the air is full of uncomfortably familiar psiionic static, making the few hairs on your arms stand to attention. He's running his long fingers over themselves, another old nervous habit, and he looks like he might have a heart attack. That strikes you as sort of funny, but you don't feel like laughing. He's only got one ring on. Just a smooth brass band.

            "Kar," he says, trying again. Nobody calls you that, nobody else was stupid enough to think that was a good nickname for you. "How… uh… so, how are you?"

            You consider just not answering him. What if you got up and left? Do you really need to know Eridan is here? Would he bother contacting you again? Equius would understand. "Alive," you say. Eridan kind of gulps. "So are you, apparently," you add.

            You're glad your voice is level. You’re starting to feel sort of unreal. It is a possibility you’re dreaming, it wouldn’t be the first time.

            "Yeah," he says, "I'm… yeah." He's avoiding your eyes again now. You consider asking him where he's been, but you don't want to throw him any bones, or look at all like you care. "You look good," he says finally. "You grew up a little."

            "You should see Kanaya," you say. "She's a skyscraper."

            Eridan pales a little, and says, "God no. I mean, just, uh… actually, would you mind not tellin' anyone?"

            "Not telling anyone what?" You say. Equius comes back in and hands you a tumbler with something and ice. You start on that immediately.

            "That I'm here, I guess, It's just—"

            "What, are you on the run from the law?"

            "No! No, thank you, I'm not wanted or anythin', fuckin' hell. I just mean… come on, Kar, I just mean I don't want to see everyone. I'm not a huge fan a stitches, or bein' dead, for that matter."

            You take a minute to finish your drink, and consider asking Equius for the bottle. But maybe now is not that time. "I'm going to tell Kanaya," you say, when you’re done. "Equius could have told you that. Did you?" You ask, turning to him.

            "I did warn him," Equius says.

            "There you go," you say, and Eridan sort of grimaces.

            "It was worth a shot."

            "It wasn't, really," you say.

            "Oh," he says. There's another silence, for which you are unapologetic. You don’t feel in the least like you owe him small talk. He gives it one more try, he begins with "I heard you were in the thresh corps," and you interrupt him.

            "Why are you here, Eridan?" He gives you this sort of caught-in-the-headlights look, which makes you wonder if maybe he _is_ wanted, and he's just not coming clean. You don’t think you’d be surprised. "I mean, why now? Why, pray tell, did I leave the warm embrace of the yeti I call a moirail and drive out to fuckall nowhere, and sit down here, and come face to face with you, on this particularly exquisite dim season's evening?"

            Eridan works his fingers over his ring and says, "Okay, yeah." And then, "well. I know it's been a while, I was just thinkin', you know, better late then never, right? An', uh, an’ I found Eq, I mean, he said he knew what you were doin', an' I just wanted to… say hi? I mean, say I'm sorry, really. Because I am. Sorry, I mean. So… uh, sorry."

            Oh.

            "Right," you say, setting down your drink. "Great. Glad we got that out of the way. Wonderful. Equius, looks like everything's in order here, and I've got a beautiful woman at home who is probably googling ways to genetically engineer a white snapper pea. Chances are she'll want someone to help her spit in the face of science." You get up, and Eridan stumbles his way out of the beanbag as well.

            "Kar, wait, Kar," he says. You ignore him and give Equius a pat on his warm, sticky shoulder.

            "Good to see you. Thanks for this," you tell him, and you keep on down the hallway. You can hear Eridan coming after you, and fuck your very soul, his legs are longer than yours.

            "Kar, hold on, hear me out," he says. You take the bait and turn at the front door.

            "I did, and you apologized," you say. "We came full circle. You fucked up, now you're sorry. There we go, closure. So I'm going home now, since we're done with that."

            "Kar, I'm not stupid, you're not even trying to pretend here," Eridan says. You give him the best 'fuck you' your eyes can relay. "Fuckin' hell," he says. "You haven't changed at all."

            "Neither have you," you say stiffly. He sags his shoulders.

            "Come on. Come on, Kar, please, that's what I'm tellin' you. I did some soul searchin' an' all that an' I know what I did was fuckin' horrible. I really actually know it, I'm not pretend knowin'-it or something. Please come on, come back an' sit down, I mean, please just give me a chance. Please."

            He reaches for your shoulder, so you back up. "It's really about time I got home," you say. He gives you a horrible hopeless look that stinks of the faces he used to pull, back on Alternia. It's not justified but it's completely honest, and it's frustrating to the moon and back. The familiarity is violently unwelcome.

            "Okay," he says. "Kar, I'll be here a little longer. Equius is puttin' me up. Just… I won't bug you anymore or nothin’, but come around again. If you ever feel like it. I'll be here."

            "Yeah," you say. "Okay, then." You give him one last look over, memorize his face, and leave.

\---

            You used to be so sure things would be different, better, as soon as you were off of Alternia. That’s where you were going to make all the changes. Alternia was a free-for-all, if you didn’t have what it took you were as good as dead, and nobody gave a fuck. You deserved it. You had hated it, what was the point? Oh, yes, everyone, let’s just kill each other all the time, you don’t even need a reason. Are you bored? Kill a guy! It was a shitty existence, stupid and unfair for everyone except bluebloods and seadwellers. You wrote the salted heiress so many letters about reform you were practically pen-pals, although you know Vriska only opened them when she needed a good laugh. Fuck her for that. It was you and Feferi against the world, sometimes.

            Feferi was the one who convinced Vriska to let everyone help her train for ascension. Feferi suggested Vriska attack the Empress first, before the Empress could surprise-murder her. Because as soon as she was off planet, Vriska wouldn’t have the protection of Gl'bgolyb, and she would be fair game for an Empress who didn’t fancy her rule being challenged. You ended up spending a lot of time with Vriska before ascension, and with Feferi, and with a couple other friends of yours, strategizing wildly and sparring against Vriska. Eridan stayed at home, because he didn’t care. But it brought Vriska closer to you, and to all of your friends. You were on actual terms with the Heiress. Yes, things were going to change. As soon as you were off planet, you’d have Vriska in charge, and she may have been a horrifying eel of a sea witch, but at least you knew her.

            Eridan had shown up on the beach, a week before ascension. You’d been there, under a high pink moon, watching Kanaya swing her chainsaws as Vriska shot dice to block. And Eridan just ran out on the sand, looking silly and out of place in his laundry-day jeans, and before you could so much as wave to him, he pitched a bomb into Vriska’s side. A tiny little avocado-shaped blob, it didn’t look like much. It shouldn’t have even hit her, with the luck she was running that far into scrimmage, but the flash explosion begged to differ. Equius later confirmed it was off a special project blueprint he had designed with Eridan, for fun, a sweep or more beforehand. It was never meant to be built at all. But it was an explosive calibrated precisely to counter Vriska’s unnatural luck, and turn it against her. Like some horrible specialized kryptonite.

            Vriska would have died if Feferi weren’t on top of her game that evening. She hauled ass to knock Vriska off target, and her own luck was average enough that the blast did minimal damage. She was a little worse for wear, but Vriska was a mess. It was hours before anyone was sure she’d make it. Out a leg, most of an arm and a fair amount of gill, there was no way she’d be able to do jack shit to any Empress. She was a shrieking, spitting, smeared pink shape on the sand.

            You can’t remember ever having been as angry.

            You hadn’t been kind, when you got your hands on Eridan. That had been your _shot_. Yours and Feferi’s, and Alternia’s. To this day, you don’t know how Eridan managed to misunderstand that.

            By now, your plans have been adjusted. Vriska is, to the Empire, officially dead. You know she’s in hiding. Feferi’s there too, keeping her company, and helping her maintain peak physical form. Someday the time will be perfect, and Vriska can take her rightful place as Empress. It’ll just take a little longer.

            You couldn't say now exactly how you'd felt back then. But you remember thinking that that was it. The most unhappy a person could be, you'd reached that point. You were wrong, of course, there's no end to mortal suffering, but to date you have never been rational about a broken heart. Sweeps later, you don't care that your plans were foiled when you were on planet. But despite your best efforts, on the odd off day, you still give a fair amount of fucks that your one, your serendipitous morning star, the god damn flaming red stardust flush of your life fucked you over like that.

            Fucked you over and then left you.

\---

            Kanaya's not in when you get home. That's ok, you kind of want to just watch some movies. You spend the rest of the night on the couch in your room, running through some of your favorite old films and some new ones you've been meaning to get to. You send a couple texts back and forth with Loethe, she wants to go to the movies tomorrow. That’ll be fun. You close the text client when you see Feferi is online. Kanaya pokes her head in when she gets back to ask what Equius had wanted. You end up saying you'll tell her later, because you're right in the middle of this movie. She goes off somewhere in the hive, and in a while you hear the sewing machine running. You turn in early, without bothering to say good morning. The sopor slime is cool and welcoming and you duck your head under immediately, rubbing it through your hair to get it to sink into your temples, and you shut out the world.

            You wake up very early the next evening, the sky still pink and the horizon orange. The sun on this planet isn't as destructive as the one on Alternia, so at this level it's even pleasant to take coffee on the front porch. You step out barefoot, sit on the plaster steps, and look out at the plains. There’s a small town in the distance. The cool air dries your hair, still wet from ablutions, and the natural light makes the landscape seem alien. The colors seem more vibrant. It's strange. It makes you feel different, like the whole world decided to change when you weren't looking.

            That was very rude of it, you think. Maybe you were happy the way you were.

            And all of a sudden, like the Empress herself came up and threw you into a wall for a laugh, you are _so angry_ at Eridan Ampora. You cannot be _lieve_ him, how much you fucking pined, like an ass, and years later he waltzes over to Equius' house like he owns it. 'Oh, yeah,' he thinks, 'here's an idea, let's go say hi to Karkat! Haven't seen HIM for a while!' You let your mug slip from your fingers and storm inside, grab Kanaya's scuttlebug keys, and slam the door as you leave again. Your bare foot lands in spilled coffee and you let it come off on the pavement as you march. You have business with a certain shitty snow-cone machine battery.

            You drive fast down the open road. In no time you are pounding on Equius' door, demanding audience, and Equius answers. He looks dressed and awake and very surprised to see you, and frankly very nervous at your appearance. "Where's Eridan," you ask him, and he wordlessly turns to lead you further into the house. Eridan appears around a corner, sliding still-wet sopor off his cheeks, saying,

            "Eq? This is an ungodly fuckin' hour for this amount of noise." And before he can do much more than widen his eyes at your approach, your fist collides soundly with his jaw, and he stumbles back into the doorframe.

            "Kar!" He yelps, as he brings his arms up. " _Karkat_ , ow, god, stop!" You feel the spark and tug of his psiionics around your arms and you shriek.

            "Don't you _dare,_ " you shout, with some panic, scrabbling at his arms to stop him. "Don't, put them the fuck away, don't you throw me off!" The teal sparks simmer down, and Eridan is the stupidest person you know, because you get him in the stomach. He doubles over and groans. " _Fuck_ you, Eridan Ampora,” you roar, “fuck you, fucking, fuck, just fuck you, _fuck_ you." You can't think of anything else, anything better, all that seems to fit is 'fuck', and you can't seem to say it enough to emphasize how much you really mean 'fuck'.

            "Karkat," Equius says, from behind you, "are you… uh… quite alright?"

            "Does it _look_ like I'm alright?" you bellow. Eridan ducks away from your next fist.

            "I am going to call Kanaya," Equius says, and he leaves. You don't care. Kanaya won't get here before you can really make this fucker sorry. _Sorry,_ he says, like two fucking syllables can make up for every night you spent wondering where he was now, how he could have rationalized fucking you over like that, why he left you, if he didn’t love you, if you could have worked it out. Like he can make up for every time you wished a new matesprit kissed like he did, every time you got kanaya's nice white jackets stained with your shitty olive tears trying to rework your pathetic roadblocked emotions.

            "How _could_ you," you're screaming, and he's grabbing at your arms manually now, trying to stop them.

            "Kar, Karkat, oh my god," he says. His psiionics finally start up again and you roar, but he ignores you and tucks your arms down, pinning them to your sides, and slides himself onto the floor, bending your knees to put you next to him. You tense against the fizzing in your limbs, but you’re trapped.

            " _Fuck_ you," you spit again, choking a little, and he gathers his arms around his knees.

            "Yeah," he says, and he looks horrible, his hair is undone and falling into his face, and he's got a split lip. You look with fierce pride on the trickle of thick gold slipping from it. "Yeah, fuck me. God, I know. Kar. I'm really… just… I know. Just don't cry. Please."

            The sparks on your arms simmer back down again as you put your hand up to your face, and oh fuck, oh no, fuck, god, he's right. You swear angrily and wipe the offending tears away. They are not welcome here. Eridan wipes his own face, smearing the blood on his chin and gingerly prodding his jaw. "You pack a better punch than you used to," he says, cautiously.

            "Your psiionics are still literally the worst," you tell him, fangs bared, keeping any shake that might want to creep into your voice tucked tightly in your mind, where it belongs. “They’re cheap and horrible.”

            "Handy, though," he says. "I'm alive.

            "You piece of shit," you say. He just looks at you. "Come on, asshole, if I'd have killed you, you'd just be… dead." you gesture shortly at him. "And then what would I have? A horrible corpse with evening breath."

            "Oh, I didn't know you felt that way," Eridan says, "I'll brush my fangs, and then after that you can kill me."

            "So considerate," you say gruffly, leaning back slowly against the wall. Eridan doesn't say anything else. He pushes his hair from his face and absently begins to groom dried sopor flakes out of it. The two of you sit in silence, Eridan stiffly brushing himself off, you willing yourself not to cry again. You cry too easily. It's times like this you wish that weren't the case. You keep waiting to grow out of it, but the world keeps disappointing you. It's a long time before Eridan says,

            "So are you… are you good?"

            "What?" you say, pulling yourself out of your thoughts.

            "Are you gonna jump me again?" He says. "Because I'd like some warning this time."

            "Talking is doing you no favors," you say. But he takes that as a yes anyways.

            "I’m glad you came," Eridan says, and you squint at him.

            "I've never had anyone glad for a split lip before," you say.

            "Well I thought you weren't coming back at all," Eridan says. "I didn't think I'd see any of you again, your fist was maybe not my first choice, but better than nothing."

            You don't know what to say to that, so you run your hand through your hair and stay quiet.

            "I've just wanted to see you again, is all," he says, and you look down at the floor and close your eyes and try to breathe. You are not going to start crying. No crying.

            Footsteps somewhere in the hive interrupt your concentration, and you hear Kanaya's voice asking for you. God, you want Kanaya so bad, it's horribly relieving to hear. You put your face in your hand so that it looks like you are supporting your head to disguise the way your face is screwing up. You don't look up for Kanaya as her footsteps come into the hallway, but you jump to your feet when you hear her snarl. Shit, you forgot she didn't know about Eridan. She's got every hackle on her raised, and you charge headlong into her stomach. She picks you up, her claws digging into your sides. You clamp your own hands firmly on her neck. "Let's go into the other room," you say into her ear, as quiet as you can. It's not particularly even, but you squeeze your palms to her pulse and she listens to you.

            "You should have come to me," she whispers, once Eridan and Equius are out of sight. Tension is in every syllable. You smooth her skin with your fingers, firm and soft, and begin to let your breath shake. She's wearing a T-shirt, she must have been moving too fast to get dressed.

            "I know," you say, in between quiet heaves, "Sshhh, Kanaya, Shh, I was stupid. I should have told you." All her muscles are bunched, and you press your palms into them, trying to convince them to relax. Both of you need to calm down pronto, this is embarrassing as fuck.

            You do pretty well. You pull all the tricks you've got to stabilize each other fast. You've been together a long time, and spent a lot of five-minute intervals in the washrooms of very crowded, very public events with Kanaya, and you flatter yourself that you've mastered quick damage control. You exit what looks like it was a trophy room looking like nothing ever happened, and feeling considerably better, to find Eridan and Equius sitting uncomfortably in the kitchen. Eridan's got a cup of coffee and is looking guiltily at you and is clearly scared stiff of Kanaya. You don't blame him, he hasn't seen her since she was about a foot shorter and she had come in angry. That almost makes you want to laugh. "Equius," you say, "do you mind if I have a cup of coffee?"

            Equius relaxes visibly now that everything has proven itself to be normal, and nobody is punching anybody else, or being intimately pale anywhere. You feel sort of bad that he got caught in the middle of this. He probably just wanted a nice quiet evening. "Help yourself," he rumbles, and you do. You take your favorite of Nepeta's mugs, fill it half with cream and sugar, and poor coffee into the remaining space. Kanaya looks at you pointedly, so you go back to her side and she asks quietly,

            "Are you going to stay?"

            "Yeah, for a bit," you reply. She gives you that look, where she doesn't quite like your decision, but you shake your head. You're fine. "We can hang out later," you say.

            "Alright," she says. "I need to get a plan draft finished tonight, so I'm going back home. No more alarming phone calls, please."

            "None," you promise. "Are you going to take the scuttlebug?" And on thinking a moment, you add, "How did you get here?"

            "I've got a bug on rental," She says. "It's for however long you're here. I figured you'd use mine all the time and I have places to go, people to see." Oops, you didn't think of that. Leave it to Kanaya, your stunning pearl.

           She leaves without any more fuss. Truly, she is your hero. You sit down at the table with Eridan and Equius. "Evening, Equius," you say, savoring the irony in the late sentiment. "Eridan."

            "How do you _live_ with her?" Eridan says, "I thought she was going to finish me off!"

            "You can bet she would have," you say. "She's like a hurricane wrapped into some skin and fancy leather, it's incredible." You shake your head fondly. She is a master, you feel like you could handle anything right now, which is a great relief.

            "Does she still dress up?" He says.

            "Worse than before. Her collars just got higher, and her skirts got bigger." You consider laughing. You can't decide if you want to try to continue being angry. Yeah, Eridan's a turd, but it's hard to care when Kanaya drops everything to come pap you into submission. "I don't know what to do with her sometimes."

            "Mm," Eridan shivers and nods, and busies himself with his coffee. He hasn't changed out of the t-shirt you think he slept in, judging by the sopor residue. Looks like he mopped up his face a little. His hair is still hanging in his face, though. You notice his hands again.

            "Just one ring?" you say. "What happened to being goldfinger?"

            "I joined the thresh corps," he says. "I'm not supposed to wear rings at all, they catch on shit or are distracting or too beautiful or something. Dyein’ my hair’s no good either, although I don’t have to dye the achroma strip black or anythin’. But I bet you already know the policies, Sarge." He wiggles his eyebrows at you, you think they've gotten thicker.

            "You _enlisted_?" You say. It's not strange you hadn't heard of him, the threshecutioner ranks are huge. Mammoth numbers. But all the same, he was right under your nose.

            "Yeah!" He says. "I didn't know you had, when I did. Pretty dumb, huh."

            "Did Equius tell you I joined? Hold up, how long have you been in contact with Equius?" You say. You turn toward Equius. "Does Nepeta know? Have you just… not been telling me? Has _Nepeta_ not been telling me?"

            "I did not know Eridan was so much as alive until a week ago," Equius clarifies. "I have not told Nepeta. I believe it would incense her unnecessarily."

            "It incensed Equius a fair amount too, God," Eridan says, "am I safe from none a you? I should have found Tav, maybe he would have just fallen over and cried or something. That's…. that's more or less the kind of thing Tav does, right?"

            "Approximately," Equius says. It takes Eridan snickering for you to realize Equius was joking. Huh.

            "Nah, I only started looking for Eq a month or so ago," Eridan says. "I thought he'd be least likely to hate the sight of me. He got pretty mad, though, I'm not sure I'm in the clear yet." You look to Equius, who shrugs.

            "I was not that mad," he says. "Eridan is exaggerating. However, he will be on his own when Nepeta finds him." You laugh at that, because there's no way you'd want to be on the receiving end of Nepeta's anger. You don't know how Terezi deals with it regularly. Then again, she's made of like, steel and cackling fire. Horrifying. Eridan is looking at you kind of strangely, so you turn your mouth back down.

            "So that's it, then?" You say. "This whole time, you were a threshecutioner, just dicking around in the military. That’s the big reveal."

            "Come on, that's what you were doing," Eridan says. "But no, I only joined… what… less than a sweep ago, anyways. Before that, I was living on Weilkschidt," he says.

            "Gesundheit," Equius says, and you're glad he does because you've never heard of it either. And that's saying something, you've been to a good handful of planets, and you went through many of them meticulously back when you were looking to hide Vriska somewhere.

            "It's a planet, mostly marshes," he says. "Not a lot of trolls, actually. Mostly Weils. They're these short little aliens. Actually, there aren’t even a whole lot a them. It’s quiet, too. I mean, not too many ghosts, cause there just aren’t that many people to die. I think we conquered it 20 sweeps back or somethin', but nobody bothered with it."

            "That's somehow worse than you being in the military the whole time." You say, and Eridan shrugs. "So the great reason you disappeared entirely is that you just had to live on a swamp? That's it?"

            "Well no, I left 'cause a, uh, what happened. You know." He moves his shoulders uncomfortably. They really are significantly bigger than they had been on Alternia. It's not a bad change. "Weilkschidt was for… okay, well, now that I'm sayin' it out loud it sounds kinda stupid, but it was for soul searching. You know, sittin' under waterfalls an' meditatin'. Learnin' about the world an’ myself an’ shit."

            "Soul searching?" you say, and you hope it's as dry and criticizing as you are aiming for. You can't imagine what Eridan thought he was going to learn, but if you and Feferi never got through to him, you don't know what letting him meditate under a swamp waterfall would do. "What, did the dead weils teach you the meaning of life?”

            “I told you, I didn’t live around any dead weils,” Eridan says. “I didn’t live around any live ones, either.”

            “If you were a pirate,” you say, “you can just tell us."

            "If you are a pirate, please don't tell us," Equius says, "I would owe Nepeta a significant amount of money."

            Eridan looks at him in surprise. "You bet on me? What did _you_ think I was doing?"

            Equius clears his throat uncomfortably and says, "Dead."

            "Oh," Eridan says. "Huh." Equius shrugs. "Yeah, ok."

            "I was quite surprised to find you on my doorstep," Equius explains.

            "Well, I didn't die. Or pirate anythin', fuckin' hell, I'm lookin' back, I should a made some gutsier choices. I could be here tellin' you about livin' with a murder circus."

            "But instead, you meditated under waterfalls," you say.

            "Well, no. I mean…" Eridan trails off and stirs what's left of his coffee. But before either of you can say anything, he starts again. "I thought it’d be dramatic, or romantic or somethin’. You know, livin' all alone, driven to solitude by my friends, doin' the noble thing an' lookin' inside myself to show you all how fuckin' pious an' thoughtful I could be. The soul searchin’ wasn't that sincere when I left, I guess. I was, hah, behavin' sorta like an ass." He laughs nervously. "I spent a while thinkin' I was repentin' for… you know. I picked the stupidest, farthest away, most uninhabited piece of shit planet there was, an' I set up camp away from the Weils. I meant to live there forever, an' be a hermit, that was the plan. I don't know what I thought would happen, really. What happened was that I was just alone a lot."

            "You could have called," Equius says.

            Eridan looks at him for a second, and says, "Nah, I couldn't a done, not really. Besides, I got used to it, sorta. I mean, it still sucked, and I was poor as fuck all, you shoulda seen my shitty house. But I did a lot a readin', an’ some writin' an’ I got pretty solid at whittlin' and shit. I'm pretty crafty now," he says, and he wiggles his fingers like it'll make a point.

            "And then you got sick of that and joined the army," you say. "An inspiring story."

            "It is, Kar, shut up, I'm still tellin' it. I just spent so much fuckin’ time alone, is the point I am getting at. I mean, I wasn't gonna troll any of you guys and I don't really know anyone else. An’ as it turns out, bein’ alone for superficial reasons doesn’t work because there’s no one to recognize the reasons, you know? So I ended up just thinking a lot about how much it sucked that I didn't have you around. I mean, any a you." He's looking at you, though, sort of pleadingly, but also very seriously. It’s sort of irritating, so you snort.

            “You kick a beehive, you get stung,” you say.

            "I know!” Eridan says, earnestly. “Because, listen, Kar, I ended up gettin’ it. Why I was alone in the first place, really, though. It took me a while, I mean, I was bein’ thickheaded as they come, but I get that I should a…” Eridan gestures sort of generally. “Listened? Trusted you an' Fef, maybe. You guys weren’t ever anythin’ but important an', no, listen, Kar, let me say this. I should a thought a what it might mean to you, an' all that stuff. I do know I'm not always right, even if I never act that way, but I guess I forgot that an' fucked it up, so bad."

            Jesus. He sounds so serious. You sort of want to laugh about his life changing self imposed time out, but mostly it’s just incredible that he apparently needed one to realize what a colossal asscramp he was. "You did fuck up," you agree with him. He keeps his attention on you. Is he waiting for you to forgive him? "So where do the thresh corps come in?" You ask, instead.

            "I just figured sittin' on Weilkschidt wasn't helpin' anythin'. I mean, after I really came to terms with the whole thing, it seemed more an' more stupid that I just stuck myself out in a marsh. I mean, my hive wasn't literally in a marsh, but the whole planet's a marsh, if you can get that. Turns out I think I just ran away to feel sorry for myself. I thought I'd be a threshecutioner cause they put you up durin' trainin', an' cause it'd be a little less lonely. Let me tell you, I was fuckin’ ready for some company. I didn't leave Weilkschidt plannin' on findin' Eq, though or you, or anyone. I was still gonna keep a distance. But, later, I just…" Eridan trails off.

            "It's understandable," Equius says, and Eridan flashes him a grateful grin.

            You don't really know what to make of any of that. You spent so long wondering what had happened to him, why he had vanished, that what he's telling you seems… kind of underwhelming. He sounds genuine, though. You think you believe him, despite your better judgment. Also despite said judgment, sitting at the table with him is comfortable. Having him in front of you brings back all the time you spent with him on Alternia, long movie nights and late evenings spent criticizing online magazine articles. This uncalled for nostalgia produces frustrating feeling of seeing exactly what you want placed right in front of you while you can't be quite sure you have it.

            "Uh, Kar, I've got a new trollian handle, if you want it," Eridan says. “I mean, if you still use it?”

            “Mine hasn’t changed,” you tell him. He gives you such a pleased look that you want to change it just to spite him. But you’re already sitting here having coffee with him. “You can find me yourself.”

            “Cool,” Eridan says, and he brushes his fingers back through his hair, pulling his bangs back away from his face. He looks so much like he used to. You can’t pin down where the change in his face is. He just looks… older? Maybe his jaw looks a little more solid. He’s definitely got some muscle definition that wasn’t there on Alternia. Well, thresh training will do that to you. There’s a thin pale scar on his jaw.

            You gesture towards your own jaw, and ask, “Did they give you a sickle a little too soon?” Eridan looks at you blankly a moment before he realizes what you mean, and then he looks bashful.

            “Well, no, not as such,” he says, “I just wasn’t _always_ so good at whittlin’ as I am now.” You’re struck with the image of Eridan struggling to put precision into a blade with his psiionics, and you laugh. You bet he threw a tantrum, even without an audience. Equius rumbles alongside you, which makes you want to laugh a little harder.

            “It ain’t as funny as all _that_ ,” Eridan says, but he sounds happy. You just shake your head.

            “It is,” you wheeze. “You’re so stupid.”

            “Maybe so,” Eridan says, “but at least I got this dashin’ scar. What do you think, Kar, is it rugged enough for you?” He models his jaw for you, and he exaggerates it for a joke, but you know he’s serious about loving it. It’s ridiculous. You had begun to think maybe you’d imagined how absurd Eridan was, but apparently you shouldn’t have.

            You stay and prod him for details for a while, as the night gets darker. Eventually Equius leaves the table, mumbling about unspecified work he needs to get done. You’re pretty sure he’s going to go sit alone in a basement. You ask Eridan if there’s a basement, he says he doesn’t know. You’ll ask Nepeta. Maybe if you roleplay the question, she’ll answer her fucking trollian messages for once.

            “By the way,” Eridan says. “What did you think I was doing? Did you ever, uh, think about me? I mean, if I was a pirate. Or anythin’.”

            “I didn’t think you’d make it as a pirate,” you say. You pause for a minute, and add, “There were times I thought you’d been taken for helmsman duty.”

            Eridan makes a face. “Fuck no,” he says. “Urgh, can you imagine? All wired in and disgusting. I get the whole glory for the empire thing, but you’re basically just a fancy motor after all that, aren’t you?”

            “Well, I didn’t think you’d have gone willingly, I have _met_ you.”

            “Oh. Well, yeah, no, nobody came to force me into a spaceship gut. I don’t think the empire even noticed I was gone.” Eridan shrugs, and you can’t tell if he’s disappointed the empire didn’t try to force him into electric bondage. On Alternia, you used to be worried he’d do something stupid and end up as a powerhouse. You used to be worried about that because, as romcoms have taught you, it’s hard to date a helmsman. That’s not particularly an issue anymore, but it rubs you the wrong way all the same.

            “Sollux got me the helmsman records,” you admit. “I used to check them. To see if your name was anywhere.”

            Eridan perks up visibly. “You did?” He asks. God, he looks like you just handed him troll Disneyland. Living in a swamp didn’t make him any less dramatic.

            You check the time, and the evening is gone, you’re well into the night. “Oh,” you say, “I have to go.” The movie Loethe wanted to see starts in a couple hours. You’d almost forgotten. For a moment, you feel guilty, and you can’t quite figure out for what. Eridan doesn’t get to mean anything to you, it doesn’t matter how stupid you were for him on Alternia. Your life hasn’t changed just because he stuck his big nose back into it. The thought settles you a little, but you clarify anyways, “I’m meeting my matesprit in town tonight.”

            “Oh,” Eridan says, his eyebrows jumping a little. “Oh, um, a’course, sure.” and you hate yourself for watching his face so closely. But you kind of want to know what he thinks of that. It’s been too long to expect any jealousy, and you don’t want it anyways, not really. Nothing will change. But you watch his mouth press thin anyways. “Go ahead, then,” he says, “I won’t keep you.”

            You say your goodbyes, dump the last half-inch of cold coffee into the sink and leave.

            Kanaya accosts you when you get home. She appears in the doorway of her study as you close the front door, and crosses her arms at you.

            “So,” she says.

            “So,” you agree. You take a step into the house and Kanaya raises her eyebrows

            “Do you want to wash your feet?” she asks you, and you roll your eyes.

            “I am absolutely sure the floor can handle my dirty feet right now,” you say, and then immediately change your position. “Actually, no, I am going to wash them, I’m supposed to meet Loethe in an hour and a half.”

            Kanaya frowns. “You can’t reschedule?”

            “Nah,” you say, heading down the hall, “I can make it, I can wash fast. Besides, it’s not like she hasn’t seen me in worse condition.”

            Kanaya follows you into the bathroom. “That’s not what I meant,” she says. “I think we need to talk.”

            You start running water into the ablution trap, and roll up the bottoms of your pants. “I know I said we would, but can you wait until later? Tomorrow, or something?”

            “Can _you_?” Kanaya asks. “At least, I don’t know if you should spend the day in the city.”

            “Are you going to cock block me?” You ask, and Kanaya gives you a look. “Ok, yeah, I know, but I think you are overestimating how much this is eating at me.” You step carefully into the trap. The water’s too hot, but now your feet are sort of muddy and there’s no backing out. You switch the water to cold and stand gingerly near the faucet. “I mean, it’s something to talk about, it’s pretty shitty of him to just show up, but the evening was fine.”

            “I don’t know, this evening looked to me like you were crying on Equius’s floor,” Kanaya says.

            “Yes, ok, admittedly that did happen,” you say. “And let’s never tell anyone that it did. But on the plus side, I didn’t attack him for the rest of the evening. It was actually… just pretty normal.”

            “Normal how?”

            “It was like… I don’t know, like he never left, sort of.” Kanaya doesn’t look happy with your answer, but you don’t have time to argue the fine points. The city is a commute, and you need to get out the door again. “It was good,” you say. “I’ll tell you where he’s been tomorrow. He was not kidnapped by aliens, by the way, nor was he a pirate.”

            “Shit,” Kanaya says, “then I owe Equius money.”

            “Kanaya, he’d be the worst pirate in the history of piracy,” you remind her.

            “I don’t know,” she says, “He can get pretty gutsy, and he hasn’t got the best moral code. Plus, he just likes _having_ things so much.”

            “He’d get taken advantage of. Immediately. By everyone,” you say. “He’s too gullible. Equius made a safe bet, because if he’d have become a pirate, he’d have been killed.”

            “It was supposed to be a safe bet for everyone,” Kanaya reminds you, leaning against the wall. “Eridan wasn’t supposed to show up and confirm his activities either way.”

            You finish shuffling the grime off of your feet, or as much as you’re going to bother with, pull the plug on the trap, and step out to find a towel. “Yeah.”

            “Yesterday you didn’t think you’d ever see him again,” Kanaya prompts you again. She’s going to keep trying to get you to stay.

            “Kanaya, I was moving on, and I’m still moving on. And moving on includes going out to the movies with my incredibly sexy matesprit, and touching the butt of said matesprit at my leisure.”

            Kanaya blocks your way out of the bathroom. “Karkat, you are still working on it. A week ago you told me you were still working on it, those were the literal words you used. That means you’re not over it, and don’t you see how Eridan coming back is going to fuck that up?”

            “No,” you say firmly. “Eridan does not get to have a hold over me. He does not get to be a problem. He gave that up when he left. It doesn’t matter that he’s back. It’s too late! Kanaya, it is too late, and I _am_ going to be fine!”

            Kanaya lets you worm your way out the door to the side of her. “You can’t force yourself to be fine,” she says, “you don’t work like that. You try and then you end up crying on Equius’ floor, and it’s embarrassing for everyone.”

            “Not this time,” you call back to her, without stopping to properly finish the conversation. “I have a handle on this. Not even the great and terrible empress herself, armed with a jewel-encrusted crowbar, could get me to relinquish my handle on this situation. My handle is simply too fucking good!” You finish up the sentence from a room over, and Kanaya doesn’t come after you, you so you count that as a win. You fix your hair a little, gather your things and get out the door again before she can decide she wants to physically restrain you. Your priority tonight is having a wonderful, quiet night with Loethe, and that’s what you intend to do.


	2. Chapter 2

            You can tell Kanaya’s been keeping an eye on you. She knocks on your door and brings you things when she’s not trapped in her office. She hasn’t said anything yet, though. You know what she’s doing, she’s waiting for you to flip out and throw yourself onto her lap. It is a strategy that has had untold success in past trial runs. And frankly, that makes you a little nervous, but you tell yourself it’s fine. Kanaya won’t need to be involved too much. Things are going fine. Besides, you did talk about Eridan with her, you covered the necessities.

            You told Kanaya what Eridan had been up to almost immediately after your day with Loethe. “So he thinks he’s ripe for forgiveness?” she asked, and you just shrugged.

            “Other than Vriska and Feferi, and maybe Nepeta, who isn’t already over it?” you said. “Vriska’s fine, and frankly, now we can take our time with the upheaval. No one would be thrilled to see him, but I don’t see him being met with too many grudges.”

            “Just yours, then,” Kanaya said, and you rolled your eyes.

            “No, and fuck you. It doesn’t matter anymore. People get their hearts broken. We can be friends, or acquaintances, at least. The only thing that’s changed is I know better than to jump into his noodle arms like he’s troll Casanova and I’m a swooning southern belle.”

            Kanaya had opened her mouth, probably to tell you something like how you need to confront your true feelings of irrepressible, carnal lust for Eridan, but you interrupted her to ask about a client. She resisted the change of topic, but the client had been badgering her about the speed of her workers, and her frustration won out and you didn’t talk about Eridan again.

            It’s been a week or so since then. Eridan found you on trollian pretty fast, and you’ve talked a couple times. Mostly about nothing. Sometimes swapping stories from the thresh corps. You tell him about some of the jerks you’ve met at the functions you’ve accompanied Kanaya to, as her tiny pale arm candy. He tells you about some of the friends he’s made and their various flaws. You find yourself avoiding talking about Loethe, which you make a mental note of as something to think about, and then do not think about. It doesn’t matter.

            Being with Loethe is still good. Not that you had any doubts that it would be, because this is the relationship where you’re going to break your fuck-up streak. You have a network of references and jokes about Yoquon set up, and it’s a steadfast reminder of your life as it is now. A good pat on the back telling you nothing’s been set on its head, the empire is still right side up. Loethe still refuses to laugh at your worst jokes. She still tries too hard not to scrape your lips with her teeth when she kisses you. She still likes you, astoundingly as ever.

            You’ve thought about mentioning again your invitation for Loethe to meet Kanaya, but Loethe hasn’t said anything about it since you brought it up the first time, so you haven’t repeated yourself. Things are going good as they are. No point in pushing it.

            Eridan is out, one night, when you decide to drop by. You don’t announce that you’re coming over, much to Equius’ chagrin, because you hadn’t planned it. You had tagged along with Kanaya to work, because it was going to be a busy day for her and you were free, and it just seemed like a good night to stay out.

            “He’s job hunting,” Equius tells you, when you come in anyways.

            “Oh yeah?” you say. “Thresh corps not treating him well? Too many dead soldiers crying in his ears?”

            “He’s in the reserves,” Equius explains. Oh. Well, you suppose if the empire can afford to have a top-notch squadron like yours on a mixed-up planet like Yoquon, they can afford to have a set of trained men in reserve.

            “How long is he staying here, then?” you ask. “Didn’t he want to avoid Nepeta?”

            “I believe he intends to find a place in the city.”

             “He’s staying on planet?” You get a pleasant flicker of hope at that, which immediately afterwards makes you uncomfortable. Well, you did come here to see him, there’s no explaining that away. So you’re happy he’ll be around. Yep. That’s fine, you are overthinking this whole thing. “So he’s staying with you until he can find a place of his own. Charitable of you.”

            “I don’t mind having him around,” Equius says. “This house is very large. Eridan hasn’t forgotten that I won’t entertain him. He keeps himself busy.”

            “Ok, yeah,” you say. Neither of you have anything particularly to add after that, but Equius just stands there politely. You probably should have just left when Equius said Eridan wasn’t in. You never have much to talk about with Equius, and he gets so uncomfortably… compliant. It’s difficult to be comfortable with someone who won’t tell you when you’re pissing them off. You don’t know if Eridan somehow broke Equius’ weird polite exterior, or if he likes the weird politeness, or what, but you just can’t relate.

            “I don’t know when Eridan will be back,” Equius finally says. “You are welcome to wait, if you want to.”

            “Uh,” you say. You don’t really have anything to do at home, and it would be nice to talk to Eridan, but you’re starting to feel weird about it. You’re about to tell Equius that no, you are definitely leaving, thanks, when the half open door creaks and you turn to see Eridan pushing through it. He smiles hugely when he sees you, showing his fangs and his dimples. “Kar!” he says. “Hey! Hi!”

            “Hey,” you say. This works too. “How’s the job hunt?”

            “Shitty,” Eridan says, closing the door. “Nobody wants my array of very marketable trade skills.”

            “You mean nobody wants an elaborate carving of a wizard on a hand-whittled magic wand,” you correct him, and he makes a face.

            “My whittlin’ is fuckin’ incredible, Kar, an’ if you can’t appreciate fine art that’s no grit off my nub. More importantly, though,” He says, “Do you have time for a drink?”

            “I guess so,” You say. “Sure.”

            Equius slips away somewhere, and you follow Eridan.

            Two hours find you sunk comfortably into Nepeta’s horrible fur beanbag chair, trying to throw raisins into Eridan’s mouth. He misses all of them, unless he cheats with psiionics, and you start aiming to get them down the collar of his shirt. Eridan gives up on catching them, and lets a couple raisins bounce harmlessly off his shoulders and onto the hideous carpet. Nepeta is a horrible interior decorator. Granted, you are too, so you’ve never opened that can of dirt noodles. You’re pretty sure she killed the beast whose skin is unceremoniously trapped beneath Eridan’s ass herself, though, and you guess that’s badass.

            Eridan’s been quiet for a couple minutes now, which strikes you as weird. He did this earlier tonight, too. He used to hate silences, he’d just keep talking. You remember that for sure because you couldn’t get him to shut up. He’d have to be in a book or something if you wanted peace. Feferi told you it was because he hated listening to the voices he heard, you think it was just because he wanted attention. Feferi always cut him too much slack. “Ground control to Eridan, do you read,” you say, kicking his leg a bit. “Come in, Eridan.”

            “Loud and clear,” he says, kneeing your foot, but it doesn’t prompt him into conversation. You’re about to bring something up yourself, because you’re thinking too much and it’s getting to you, when he says, “It’s like old times.”

            “What,” you say, “Did you used to spend a lot of time with your face in dead animals?” He rolls his eyes. You know what he meant. You just don’t want to talk about it. Old times are dead. Reviving them is the kind of necromancy even Gamzee would advise against. Your foot is still leaned again Eridan’s leg, so you move it self-consciously.

            “I didn’t know if you’d talk to me at all,” Eridan says. “I dunno. It’s just nice… I mean, it doesn’t feel as hard as I thought it’d be.”

            It’s not as hard as you thought it’d be at all. It’s been easy to slip back into knowing Eridan. It should be harder, there should be a distance, some constant blaring discomfort, and you’re just not finding it. You don’t say anything.

            “Bein’ alone sucks,” Eridan says. “I don’t know how Eq can stand it.”

            “I think Equius is secretly a robot,” you suggest, taking the conversation out of waters you don’t like. “He has gradually replaced all of himself with robotic parts. Truly he has perfected his art.”

            Eridan laughs. “His real brain is deep in the closet, in a jar.”

            “He programmed himself to do nothing but sweat a lot, pick up Nepeta so she can reach high cupboards, and stare at walls.”

            “Hey,” Eridan says. “What’s his deal with Ara? He won’t talk about her. How long did they last?”

            “The good Empress’ sweaty sports bra, did they break up again?” You try to push yourself up a bit in the beanbag chair, but you sink sideways. You give up and fight your way out of it altogether to sit on the floor, leaning your back against the couch.

            Eridan looks at you in attention. “They stayed together? Do they break up a lot? Is it because he’s such a homebody? That’s my bet. You gotta fill me in, here, Kar.” You will gladly do just that.

            “Equius won’t flip with her,” you tell him. “You know he’s been steamed over her since we were seven. And—”

            “Is she black for him?”

            “Shut your blisterhole, I’m getting there. Not entirely, they’re together a lot and it’s always flushed. If you ask me, she just doesn’t have the patience for Equius’ ideal redrom. And then if she tries to push it rougher, Equius won’t budge and says he can’t do black, and then she gets mad and says that she won’t do red, and then she leaves. Nepeta says she’s just not as interested in him as he is in her, but they get back together every time. It is clearly not true and Nepeta can go scratch her horrible theories into a shitty cave wall and stick her fist up her nook.”

            “Holy smokes,” Eridan says. “Frankly, I’m surprised they made it this far. I didn’t think Equius was capable of holding a thing like her down.”

            “Okay, I don’t quite understand that either, admittedly, but whatever it is, she’s definitely stuck on him. I think Equius just needs to let arguments happen with her a little more and they can sail redrom fine, he’s just such a doormat. Aradia’s not pitch for him, I don't know if she thinks she is, but I think she just gets restless. And then things get ambiguous.”

            “Fuckin’ hell, though, I bet he hates it,” Eridan says, rolling over to put his chin in his hands. “This’s gotta be tearin’ him up. He’s got such a soft underbelly, it’s embarrassin’.”

            “Well if he’d suck it up, maybe his girlfriend wouldn’t fly off the handle every fucking perigee,” You say.

            “No way,” Eridan says. “He’s just gotta fight back a little louder.”

            “Yeah, ok,” you say. “We’ll see if he’s ever capable of that.”

            “Is Ara still with Sol? They seemed tight, back on planet.”

            “Yeah, actually. They hit a rough spot a couple sweeps ago, they tried to move in together and Sollux ended up having an aneurism over personal space. Aradia didn’t want to have rooms in her own hive she wasn’t allowed in, and she had just broken up with Equius for the first time and I thought she and Sollux were done for. But Aradia just moved out and Sollux simmered down and threw a pity party bitchfit about being mean to her until she came to visit and papped his ass into the ground. ”

            “God, I missed all the best stuff,” Eridan sighs.

            “Well if you wanted to get a newsletter you shouldn’t have stranded yourself in the marshes of loneliness and regret.”

            Eridan shrugs, and says, extremely casually, “Hey, so, is Sol still… I mean, are he and… what’s Sol up to? What’s he doing?”

            “You mean Feferi?” you ask, and Eridan kind of winces apologetically. You haven’t talked about Feferi at all. You kind of wish you could tell him Feferi couldn’t wait to see him again. But you don’t think that’s true. “Sollux and Feferi officially broke up. But I think he’s waiting for her, actually, which is the most tragic, boneheaded thing I’ve ever heard.”

            “They broke up?” Eridan sits up entirely. “Why? I mean, don’t get me wrong, Sol is a living turd, but if Sol an’ Ara made it… besides, Fef always… Feferi liked him.”

            “Well, mostly he can’t be seen in contact with her,” you say. You pause. You know Nepeta would have made sure the house wasn’t bugged, but you lower your voice anyways. “Feferi offered to go with Vriska. She’s not technically in hiding herself, but she can’t really leave planet much and Sollux can’t be drawing attention to it.”

            Eridan’s staring at you with saucer eyes. You wonder if you should have steered conversation away from Feferi. You continue anyways. “They talk all the time, though. Feferi says she wants him to date other people, but he keeps finding excuses not to. Says he’s too busy. Yeah, too busy chatting online with his ex and crying on the floor. At this rate they’ll wait until takeover and just get back together.”

            Eridan’s face is just a little too intense for dating gossip. He looks shocked, frankly, his mouth is hanging slightly open, like a cartoon.

            “Uh,” you say. “Feferi’s fine, though. She’s been doing well.”

            “Fef’s with Vriska?” He says, “Is… Vris isn’t _alive_?”

            What? “Yes? Well, she’s half metal, no thanks to you, but she’s fine.”

            “Fuckin’ _hell_ ,” Eridan whispers. “Kar, I heard she was dead! I thought… fuckin’ hell.”

            Oh. According to the empire, Vriska’s officially dead, and it’s not like Eridan has any news sources among your friends anymore. Except you, apparently. Three sweeps late. “Fuck,” you say. “Yeah. Sorry. I forgot you didn’t know.” Eridan falls back on to the carpet, and pushes his hands underneath his glasses.

            “Fuck,” he says.

            “We had Terezi report that she was murdered by some crazy radical, that’s you, right before ascension, so nobody would come after her to finish the job. Sollux found a planet to hide Vriska on, Equius eventually got her fixed up into a freaky cyborg, and Feferi keeps an eye on her.” You shrug, uncomfortable. “It’s all under tight wraps. We don’t want any more sabotage.” You consider giving him some shit for that, because lord knows he’d deserve it, but he’s got his palms dug into his eye sockets and he’s rolled over onto his side. Maybe later.

            “Uh,” you say, “you ok?”

            He gives you a muffled, “yes,” so you let him lie there. He thought he killed her after all, huh. You had just assumed he would have known she was ok. He was still around when she’d finally stabilized, on Alternia. But he left fast, and if the next thing he heard was that the heiress was dead, you supposed it’s not that far fetched that he thought she’d relapsed or something. Was he glad? Well, by the look of him now, probably not. A moment of sympathy strikes you. _Good_ , you interrupt yourself savagely, pushing the sympathetic thoughts away. He should feel horrible.

            You’re overthinking this, again. You tap his leg with your foot, in a way that you hope is comforting, but also says, ‘please stop being dramatic on the floor’.

            “Urgh,” he says feelingly, but he takes his hands away from his face and sets his glasses back on properly. “Well, good to know.” He picks himself up and comes to lean against the couch next to you. “I didn’t like the idea a hearin’ her gristly voice from the afterlife.” And after a moment, “You’re still plannin’ to off the Empress, then?”

            “Yeah,” You say. “And hopefully we’ll be a little better put together when we do.” Eridan nods, and says,

            “You know, if there’s anythin’ I can do to help, I’d, uh, like to… I know, ok, I know,” he adds, in response to the look you give him. “Nevermind, then. Just so you know, though...”

            “No offense,” you say. “But I think you’ve helped enough.” Eridan just grimaces, and falls silent again. 

            You think about Feferi again. Should you tell him? Will he care? You’d care if it were you. You’d probably be unhappy. But then again, Eridan isn’t particularly in a position to deserve your sympathy. Maybe he deserves to know anyways? Maybe he deserves to feel bad about it. Well. At any rate, you’d want to know.

            “Feferi’s got a new moirail,” you tell him. “Vriska. It’s been a sweep or so now.”

            “ _Vriska_?” Eridan’s eyes snap to yours. “D’you m—ugh.” He slumps down further against the couch. “Oh. Ok,” he says. “Good for her.”

            “She’s doing a good job,” you tell him, keeping your eyes on his face. He’s studying his short claws.

            “I bet,” he says, pushing at a cuticle. “She’s, uh, damn good.”

            You can’t really tell if he’s sulking. But you imagine he is. The more you look at him, the more sulky he looks. That’s so like him. Everything goes on hold for Ampora, god forbid Feferi get on with her life. “Well, you left,” you say. “Did you expect to come back to find her arms open? Just petting a fucking nutbeast, tapping her toes, waiting for you?”

            “No,” Eridan says to his hands.

            “Well, then sit up,” you say.

            He does, without comment. It’s unsatisfying. “She was wasted on you anyways,” you say. “When it counted.”

            He seems to have lost himself in his ring. He picks at it intently, turning it gently on his finger, and does not reply.

            “Vriska’s been better since they got together. And you should hear Feferi talk about her, it's sickening.”

            “Kar,” Eridan says, a little abrupt. “I know Fef isn’t comin’ back to me. I know all that stuff about us not… I mean, me not bein’ really maybe the best a moirails. That I coulda been.”

            “Well, you’re sulking,” you say.

            “I’m not!” he snaps.

            “You fucking are!”

            “Well you’re rubbing it my fuckin’ cartilaginous nub, aren’t you! It’s a little hard, Kar! I’m not exactly fuckin’ thrilled that it had to be Vriska, either, I mean, Kar, would Fef a left me anyways?”

            “Maybe! We’ll never know! You blew it first!” you say, and you might be losing your cool a little, maybe, but Eridan is a shitswilling pissmop and you think you should tell him that.

            “I know!” Eridan roars, his psiionics crackling faintly around his horns. “I just missed her! Ok! I’m not a fuckin’ machine! I got a heart!”

            “You have a funny way of showing it!”

            “You know what, Kar?” Eridan says hotly, running his hands through the lightshow in his hair, “I think maybe I got some stuff I need to take care of today. I’m a little busy to be visitin’. I think it’s about time you maybe left.” He picks himself off the ground and takes a couple steps back, and waits for you.

            Well, fine, fucking fine, fuck Eridan and his self-absorbed shit show. You shouldn’t be here anyways, what, you think you can just be friends with him again? You think you _want_ to just be friends with him again? He’s a horrible presumptuous bag of dicks. You stand up, and glare him down despite his extra inch on you. And you turn away, leave without saying a fucking thing. Your words are a gift and you are _wasted_ on Eridan.

            But when you’re a yard from Equius’ front door, angry at Eridan and yourself and you know what, everything else too, Eridan calls for you. You turn, and he looks a little panicked.

            “Kar!” he says, hurrying down the hall towards you. “Kar, look, I’m sorry, don’t leave. I mean, you can leave, but don’t leave forever. Uh, come and visit again. I’m gettin’ my shit together, you won’t hear a peep about Feferi. Or about… anythin’, anythin’.” His eyebrows wrinkle together as he searches your face. “Can we be ok?” He asks.

            It’s like a weight has been lifted, like magic. Fuck. You are _so_ fucked, if that’s what your mood was about. “Yeah, fine,” you say, like you could have ever told him no.

            He sighs with incredible feeling, and sweeps you into his arms. His neck smells good, it’s so familiar, it throws you back to evenings spent draped over him on the couch and late nights spent wrapped around him, fucking him into the carpet. You put your arms around him to pull him closer, for just a moment, because you missed him so much. You miss him so much. You still miss him, he’s right here and you miss him. Oh fuck, oh fuck.

            “I should go,” you say into his shoulder, and he releases you.

            “You’ll come back?” he asks, and you nod. You’ll be back.

_ _ _

            You take an evening trip to the river with Loethe. The bank is grassy and tinged blue in the moonlight, it’s beautiful. She says she’s just indulging the romantic in you, but you think she likes it. This far south, the river runs wide and slow, and it fills the night air with a sweet low rushing. Some small bugs buzz around in the grass, but you can't see them. There wasn’t anywhere like this near you on Alternia, just oceans full of seadwellers, and Eridan was never one for the beach. The ocean made him feel too small, and he liked to be big and important.

            “Karkat?” Loethe nudges your shoulder from beside you on the bank.

            “What?” you ask, coming out of your thoughts.

            “I said, have you heard anything from Yoquon?”

            “Fuck no,” you say. “It’s barely been a couple weeks.”

            “What, you think they aren’t going to call in what resources they have as soon as they can?”

            “That’s exactly what I think,” you say. “They're not exactly prioritizing us, it's not like there's an actual war on. I mean, it’s going to be another two weeks from now before they even have an estimate of when they’ll want us back.”

            “God,” Loethe says, with a frustrated sigh. “I wish they’d get their shit together sooner. I think they handed my squad over to Qulerre, I’m going to come back to a bunch of soft boiled nuts.”

            “Done with vacation already, huh?” you ask, and she groans.

            “Very. There are only so many tabletop puzzles I can do, Karkat. And I have done all of them.”

            “Kanaya has a couple, I think,” you say. “I’m pretty sure I could just give them to you. There are pieces missing from all of them and it just makes Kanaya furious. You can always tell she's been doing a puzzle if you find a broken lamp. You know what, please take them. You’ll be doing me a favor.”

            “Keep your hellish puzzles,” Loethe says, and she leans her head onto your shoulder, sighing again. “You and Kanaya are really close, aren’t you,” she says.

            “She’s a strange, angry, colossal growth on my pusher,” you say. “Doctors are stumped. How am I still alive with this murderous tumor? And also somehow so handsome?”

            Loethe fails to laugh at your hilarious bravado. “You’re happier with her around,” she says. “It’s different. I don’t think you’ve been mad once since we’ve been on planet.”

            Well, she’s wrong on that account, but there’s hasn’t been much of a reason to get her tangled up in your issues with Eridan. You’ve mentioned an old friend returned, but you’re really not excited by the idea of discussing him with Loethe.

            “And you’re spacier,” Loethe says. “It’s like because your moirail’s so tall, you’ve got to put your head up in the clouds when you spend time with her.”

            “I’m not spacey,” you say. “When am I ever spacey?” Loethe rolls her eyes.

            “I had to call your name three times to get your attention, like, five minutes ago,” she says. Oops. You don’t remember that.

            “Nonsense,” you tell her. “I’m always alert. Life is a battlefield, and I am a marksman. Always on target. You must be mistaking me for someone else.”

            “I don’t know how you made it in the thresh corps,” she says, and you take the insult because she sounds happier. You pick yourself up and swing yourself over her legs, to sit on her lap.

            “You should know, in fairness, that I slept my way to the top.” She laughs and lets you lean in to kiss her. Her lips are soft and full, and when they part, her teeth are sharp and even. She’s about the same size as Eridan, which means just a little bigger than you, although she has muscle mass that he never did. You wonder, though, how similar they would be now. Eridan is significantly more solid than he used to be. His lips would still be thin, though, and his cheekbones sharp. He always tasted like chapstick.

            Loethe takes you home to her small apartment, lays you on the couch and goes down on you, with technique and efficiency that would render a lesser man helpless. She is ruthless, kind, intelligent, beautiful and dead sexy, and yours.

            But you think about Eridan anyways.

_ _ _

            Kanaya isn’t home when you return, she’s at the office. But it’s about time to admit you’re fucked, so you wait in her room. You like her room, it’s familiar and well organized and it steels you. You watch movies on her husktop (you know all her passwords, she is not that creative) to put your thoughts on hold. She comes home late, the sun peeking out over the horizon, and in a blessedly calm mood that you are going to take thorough advantage of.

            “Kanaya, help me, I’ve lost control of my life,” you say, from where you’ve been marinating in romcoms on her couch.

            “My stupid little Bundt cake, you lost control of your life years ago,” Kanaya says, hanging a long, aggressively white coat on a rack. “Stay there, I bought gingerbread for tomorrow but I think maybe today is a good time for it.”

            “You are a perfect woman,” you call after her.

            When Kanaya has situated herself beside you and handed you a fork, you explain that she was right, Eridan is fucking you up. She nods, because of course she was right. You have been set back a million miles on your ‘getting the fuck over Eridan’ journey.

            “You took long enough to admit it,” Kanaya says.

            “Well, it shouldn’t be a problem,” you tell her, loading your fork cake. “I thought it wouldn’t be.”

            “When have you ever managed to keep anything from being a problem?” Kanaya asks. “Especially Eridan. I have never once seen you stop Eridan from being a problem. Even on Alternia.”

            “Yeah, but that is his fault, because he is a walking, breathing, electric problem. By nature,” you explain. “I am a victim.”

            “Karkat,” Kanaya says, when your mouth is busy with gingerbread, “are you still in love with him?”

            You struggle to swallow quickly, and tell her, “No! Fuck no, Kanaya, no… I don’t know. It’s not that clean cut.”

            “Have you at least thought about it?” she asks. “Especially if you’re picturing him while you’re with Loethe. That seems pretty textbook, actually.”

            “I know, I know it does,” you say. Cake is not doing it anymore, so you put down your fork and tumble sideways onto Kanaya’s lap. “But I don’t want him flushed. Or calignous,” you add, before Kanaya can say anything. “I don’t want him in my quadrants at all.” Kanaya smooths down your hair until you continue. “I think I just miss him more. Now that he’s in front of me again. It’s like… I miss loving him. But I don’t anymore.”

            “Are you sure?” Kanaya says. You wish she wouldn’t.

            “Yes,” you say. “He still left. I don’t think he’d kill Vriska again, but it still happened. And I know it did, and I’ll never forget it, and it’s not the same. It’s like I’m just haunted by his ghost, but it’s the same one I always had around, now it’s just got a solid counterpart. With nice arms.”

            “Well,” Kanaya begins, but she trails off and you have to prompt her to continue. “Well,” she says. “I’m sure you’ve considered it might be serendipity. Since he came back.”

            “No,” you say, sharply. “Come on, Kanaya. Serendipity is right out, I used up all my fate on you.”

            “Sweet,” Kanaya says. “But I know you. You’ve thought about it.”

            You have. “It doesn’t matter. If it was fate, he wouldn’t have left me. If it was perfect serendipity, honest-to-god stardust flush, we would have worked it out. You don’t need to leave a fated partner.”

            “If you’re not going to ask for him back, stop talking to him,” Kanaya says. “You need to stop seeing him. You can’t sustain this.”

            "No." You turn your face into her stomach, like pouting will help. “I don’t want to stop.”

            “It’ll just get worse. And you’ll beat yourself up about it and Loethe will suffer it too.”

            “I don’t want any of this. I just want to go back to when Loethe was enough, and Eridan was a bad dream.”

            “You’re being a child,” Kanaya says, pulling you off her lap and sitting you up straight. You lean back against her arm when she lets you go, but she doesn’t stop you.

            “I don’t want to stop talking to Eridan,” you say quietly. “I just got him back.”

            “I think maybe it would have been better if you hadn’t,” Kanaya says. “Maybe you should break up with Loethe."

            “No,” you say, a little more firmly. “Loethe and I are good together. I can make it work with her. I just need to… I don’t know. I’ll figure it out. Maybe we’ll just make it until we’re back on Yoquon. When Eridan’s not around anymore. Then I’ll forget about him and remember her.”

            “Maybe,” Kanaya says. She doesn’t sound convinced.

            “It’ll be okay,” you say.

            “What will you do if it’s not?”

            “Cry,” you say. She laughs.

            “My alabaster doll, you ask for my help and then decide to do nothing. What am I going to do with you?”

            “Humor me,” you say. “And feed me gingerbread.”

            Kanaya does both these things for you.

_ _ _ _

            It doesn’t get better.

            You didn’t really think it would, if you’re honest with yourself, but it’s harder to watch things fall apart than it is to imagine it. You try, sort of, to talk with Eridan less. You don’t. You chat on trollian every other day. He invites you over every couple of days, and you’ve only said no once. It’s nice to spend time with him, it never feels problematic while you’re there, playing cards, having a couple drinks and leaning on his shoulder, laughing about how many lava lamps Sollux has. It’s easy to spend time with Eridan, you already know him so well. The only really noticeable difference is the occasional silences. You spend more time with Equius, too, who as it turns out, is an okay guy. If a little gross and stubborn. He tells you Eridan’s silences are not limited to when you are around, that on the whole he has been a bit subdued. Equius says he’s pretty sure it’s from all the time spent alone. He was the same way, he says. When you spend sweeps talking to nobody, silence doesn’t feel unnatural.

            You don’t think about how you shouldn’t have let him lie in your lap until later, or how you should have pulled his fingers out of your hair. You don’t feel like you’re getting sucked back into heartbreak until later, when you’re falling asleep, or when you’re with Loethe.

            You put more of an effort in with her, when you think of it. Kiss her more, find ways to be touching her, holding her hand. It’s not a hardship for you, she’s beautiful. You’re happy when you're with her. You’ve always liked her rough hands, her thick skin, her coarse, curly hair. You tell her so, when it occurs to you.

            But it still feels like she’s falling through your fingertips. And it scares you, because it’s the same things you’ve seen happen to your other relationships, even when Eridan was just a name you had neglected to delete from your phone. You’ve begun to notice that she’s right, you do space out. And more often than not you’ll have been thinking of Eridan. Your thoughts aren’t always with her during sex, either. Sometimes you nudge your mind to bring her back center stage, but occasionally you just give up. Let Eridan be the one with his claws on your throat, his tongue on your horns.

            You’ll catch Loethe looking at you like she’s not seeing you. She doesn’t kiss you as often as you kiss her. You don’t know if she’s pulling away from you, or if you’re pulling away from her. You don’t know how much of the distance you’re imagining, or how far to correct yourself. You can’t bring yourself to ask her to come see Kanaya.

            It’s a late morning in Loethe’s apartment. The sun is past the horizon, and the heavy curtains are drawn, filtering what dull light gets through into sepia. You have her on her back on her concupiscent platform, her bare breasts sagging gently to the sides, her hair undone and wild, her cheeks teal. You spent all night with her, joking over stupid things, making fun of people in the street. It’s blessedly easy to think of her this morning, for the first time in a while. She breathes shallowly in your ear as you kiss her neck, scraping your fangs as lightly as you can over her skin. As you work a third finger up inside her nook, she begins to cry.

            Your heart plummets. You think for a moment that maybe she’s just breathing funny from arousal, but no, she’s definitely crying. “Um,” you say, “D’you want me to keep…?” She shakes her head no. Damn. You pull your fingers out of her and wipe them uncomfortably on your bare thigh. Your partially unsheathed bulge gives a halfhearted wave. Hers has retracted completely. “I’m sorry,” Loethe says, but she doesn’t stop crying her quiet short sobs. This has happened to you once before, with a boy you dated for all of two weeks. It didn’t end well. Fuck, oh god. Ok.

            Alright. You need to calm down. You could be wrong, you don’t know what this is. Maybe a friend of hers died? But you’d probably know if that was it. Your chest feels tight.

            “I’m sorry,” Loethe repeats, and she curls in on herself. You sit back on your heels. “B-but I just can’t…” she stops to try to breathe. “I can’t,” she says again, like it’s an explanation. You hope it’s not.

            “I’ll go… do you want some toast? Something to drink?” You say. You shift towards the edge of the platform. “I’ll go.” Maybe she’s having battlefield flashbacks.

            She shakes her head again, and covers her face with her hands. “I’m, I’m… I mean I think… p-pale for you,” she whispers.

            Oh, god. _God_. “What?” you say, like maybe you misheard her. Haha, she’ll say. Good joke. These are just allergies.

            “I’m s-sorry,” she gasps again. “I c-can’t stop. I thought… it would, it would go away.”

            “I won’t leave Kanaya,” you say numbly.

            “I _know_ ,” she says.

            You run your hand slowly over your head, and look at her, all tough dark skin and curves in the muted light. Crying because she made the mistake of trying to love you flush. Fuck, oh God. God.

            “But I can’t do mastesprits,” she finally whispers. “Karkat. I’m sorry.”

            “Ok,” you say, as lightly as you can manage. “Ok. I should go. I'll go. I’m… uh, I’m sorry, too.”

            “Goodbye,” she says, as you pull yourself up to find your clothes. You leave her there, curled on the concupiscent dais, unfairly beautiful and alone.

            You shouldn’t really drive with this amount of light, the sun is full in the sky and it’s hard on your vision, but you can’t stay with Loethe. You want Kanaya, right now. Immediately. You send her a couple messages before you start the car, all the windows except the windshield covered, and hope you don’t have to wake her up when you get back. The drive is long and bright, but the roads are empty and straight, and you think very hard about nothing.

            Kanaya isn’t asleep. She’s sitting inside the front door for you, in her elegant pastel dressing gown, and lets you fall right into her arms.

            “She was pale for me,” you murmur into Kanaya’s chest, and Kanaya’s arms tighten around you. Her claws prick at your sides. When you inevitably begin to cry, she picks you up and carries you into her room, and holds you on the couch until you can speak again.

            “It was going to work,” you say, keeping your head buried in Kanaya’s neck. And you know you sound stupid, but Kanaya’s heard you at your worst. “She was so good.”

            “You’re just too sweet,” Kanaya says, pressing a kiss to the top of one of your horns. “You can’t help it.”

            “Every single time. They always know I have a moirail, and they fall down white anyways.”

            “Not everyone,” she says.

            “Everyone,” you say.

            “What about the bartender? From Tchark?”

            “Yes,” you say. “Let’s list all the people who have dumped me and think very hard about all the reasons they didn’t want me. What a great plan.” You cry a little more, despite your best efforts. You are always worse at not crying if Kanaya is around, she’s like a green light ‘go’ for your emotions.

            When you are too tired to cry or complain anymore, Kanaya settles you in sopor beside her, and you fall asleep at nearly noon.

\- - -

            You spend the next two days feeling sorry for yourself. Luckily, this is an area in which you excel. You take all the blankets you can find and make a nest on the couch in your room, and watch every movie you can think of, sometimes pausing in the middle of one to start another. You read trashy gossip magazines about highbloods’ personal affairs. There’s a grainy photo of Terezi where she supposedly has a gill piercing. You know she has at least two. Kanaya isn’t in any of the magazines, (which isn’t that unusual, because the paparazzi are terrified of her) and that’s probably a good thing. But you love it when they are snide about her fashion.

            Kanaya comes in and out. She spent the evening after you came home with you on the couch, but she has things to get done and clients to intimidate and also has seen all your movies twice and somehow thinks that’s enough times. You cry at _Sleepless in Seattle_ and wonder how she would rather be pulling weeds than experiencing true serendipity vicariously through troll Meg Ryan and troll Tom Hanks.

            Eridan sends you a couple of lines over trollian, hoping to chat, but you don’t answer. You don’t want to think about him right now. It makes you feel guilty and horrible, and you’re kind of angry with him. It’s not his fault that Loethe was pale for you, but it feels like it. You end up closing trollian at the expense of not telling Feferi about your breakup. She will have to wait to hear about how cursed your love life is. Not that she is ever particularly entranced by your occasional romantic misadventure. It occurs to you that Eridan is really the guy you’d want to talk about relationships with, which only makes you feel worse.

            On the second night, Kanaya check in on you while the credits to _The Notebook_ roll. “Eridan called me,” she says.

            The comfortable misery of having just watched _The Notebook_ dissipates, and is replaced by the very uncomfortable misery of real life. “I’m surprised,” you say. “Were his fangs chattering in fright? Did he wet himself?”

            “He’s not that scared of me,” Kanaya says, but you think she sounds a little proud. “He wanted to know if you’re home.” Jesus. It’s only been three days since you last talked to him. Four, at most. Does he think you died? You consider that. You did sort of die. You feel reasonably dead.

            “What did you say?”

            “That you were busy.”

            “You’re the best,” you say feelingly, and you reach for the box of tissues.

            “I said you would visit tomorrow, though,” Kanaya says. You groan.

            “Statement redacted. You’re the worst. A plague upon trollkind. Kanaya, I am busy trying to physically merge with this couch. I think I’m making some progress, can you tell where the couch begins? And where is my ass? Soon they will be the same thing. Then my healing process can truly begin.”

            Kanaya comes around in front of you and pushes you and your blanket nest to the side so that she can sit down. She takes up a good half of your couch, and now all of your pillows are arranged wrong. “I think you should visit Eridan. Equius will be there too, he never goes out.”

            “Is Nepeta back?” you ask, and Kanaya shakes her head. “Then no,” you say.

            “Too late,” says Kanaya, “I said you would go, and if you don’t, I will invite both of them over here.”

            You groan and retreat further into your messed up puddle of cushions. “Kanaya, what did I ever do to you?”

            “You can’t just sit on this couch forever,” she says, very firmly, and she is wrong. “You’ll feel better when you’re up.”

            “How can I trust you won’t clean up my couch while I’m gone, so I can’t come back to it? You are sneaky and horrible, I wouldn’t put it past you.”

            “Because I am too busy to bother with cleaning your room. Go hang out with friends.”

            “Sure, yeah, can you find Feferi for me? I would even take Sollux. Let me just call up Qulerre, see if he wants to get lunch.”

            Kanaya measures you up with her eyes for a minute, and says, “She didn’t break up with you because of Eridan, did she? Is that what’s going on here?”

            “No,” you say. “Not really. Not directly. But she would have. I could feel it. It doesn’t matter, it would have ended anyways.”

            “Oh, Karkat,” Kanaya says, with more exasperation than sympathy.

            “Kanaya,” you say, because she clearly does not understand how shitty this is, “What if I _am_ in love with him? What if it didn’t work because I’m in _love_ with him.”

            She laughs, which you think is inappropriate for this situation, but you let it slide because you love her. “It didn’t work because you are the sweetest white lily in the empire, and Karkat, my biscuit, I will never let anyone else have you.” She kisses the top of your head, and says, “Are you in love with Eridan after all?”

            You don’t know. You can’t tell anymore. Eridan is just always so there, so in your mind, so handsome, so frustrating. You don’t miss him so much anymore. You just like how he winks at you when he floats a mug of coffee into your hands. And the more you think about it, the more you think you might still love him. And the problem, what you've always know, is that you just can’t have that. “Pet my hair,” you tell her. “I want hair petting for this conversation.”

             “You are, aren’t you,” she says, and she pulls you into her side, and rakes her claws gently over your skull.

            “It doesn’t matter,” you say. “I don’t want to be.” You pause, but Kanaya doesn't fill the silence. "It's not really an option."

            “Because he sabotaged Vriska? He’s always been a piece of shit, that never stopped you.”

            “Because I know how it ends, Kanaya. We’ve done it before. It ends in Eridan doesn’t care. And salt on Her fins, I can’t do it again.”

            “He didn’t sound like ‘not caring’ on the phone,” Kanaya says. “He acted like ‘indisposed’ meant you had a pox.”

            “I just wanted it to work out with Loethe. I think I thought Eridan wouldn’t be a problem if I could just… be with Loethe, forever.”

            “That would have been easier, wouldn’t it,” Kanaya says, and you sigh.

            “It would have been better. I don’t want to see him tomorrow.”

            “Yeah, you do,” Kanaya says. “Also, I want you out of the house.” Fuck. Your moirail is a bully.

            “You wanted me to stay away from him, do you remember? Well I am agreeing now! You said, Oh, Karkat, Don’t Hang Out With Eridan, You Will Just Cry A Lot And Be A Useless Dripping Sack Of Sour Milk And Also Eridan Smells Bad. That’s probably an actual quote from you.”

            “And you didn’t listen, so I’m officially decreeing that you have lost your chance to stop hanging out with Eridan. You already messed it up. Just go, he’ll cheer you up, and you’ll still be a, um, dripping bag of milk, but at least you will be a happier one. And one that is not being a couch lump.”

            “I’ll be the most miserable couch lump bag of milk in the empire. They’ll turn this house into a tourist attraction. Come one, come all, see the grumpiest expired dairy product alive, he’s so miserable your eyes will fizzle out, but you’ll still pay for the experience.”

            Kanaya cups your jaw in her monstrous hand and presses her lips sweetly against the corner of your mouth. “Go,” she says.

            She’s wearing lipstick, there’s probably a great pastel smear on you now, but you give up anyways. “Fine,” you tell her. “You win.” You give her a kiss in return. “I’ll go. But I won’t enjoy myself.”

            “You will,” she says, and you sigh.

            “Yes,” you say. “I will. And it will be horrible.”

_ _ _

            She’s right, your ivory godzilla, as always. You feel a little better as soon as you’re dressed properly, and half an hour into conversation with Eridan you feel normal, comfortable. He greets you enthusiastically, and you grumble, but it’s nice and you like him. You always like how much he wants you around. Which makes you feel guilty, in the cracks between conversation, or when Eridan falls silent. Like you owed Loethe more of your heart than you managed to give her. You think maybe it would have been better if she actually had dumped you because you weren’t there for her. Did she notice you were drifting? Probably. It probably just drove her paler. Urgh.

            So when Equius emerges from god knows where with a bottle of good scotch, held gingerly as a baby lamb in his wildebeest hands, you are more than happy to join in.

            “Eq, I didn’t even know you drank,” Eridan says delightedly. “I just assumed it was all milk, all the time, for you!”

            “I figured by now all your body fluids were just milk,” you join in. “Your goal, to one day become milk itself.”

            “Gross,” Eridan laughs, pouring himself a glass. “Eq, tell me you’re not going dissolve into dairy someday.”

            “Science can promise nothing,” Equius says. “Research is ongoing.” You’re 90% sure he’s joking. You’ve gotten more used to Equius and jokes. You’re pretty glad he’s not, as you had previously assumed, slightly sentient, slightly damp wallpaper. You had always figured Nepeta exaggerated when she told stories about him doing things like laughing, or saying more than three words at a time. Something occurs to you.

            “Equius, do you have a basement?” you ask, and Equius nods.

            “Of course. Don’t you?”

            “Fuck no, it’s not like we don’t have all the space above ground that we need. Now here is the important question,” you say, and you pause both for drama and to take a sip of your drink. “Did you turn it into your mad science laboratory.”

            Equius shrugs. “Would you like to see it?” he offers, and Eridan says,

            “Yes! Yes, I’m acceptin’ on behalf a the both a’ us, Eq, take us to your crazy milk science laboratory.” He hops up off his kitchen stool, and flips the bottle of scotch into the air with his psiionics. “Kar, we are going on a field trip.”

            “You may want to bring your grub pup,” you say, “to hold if you get scared. There is no telling what horrors await us in the depths of Zahaak’s dairy cellar. Say goodbye to your loved ones.”

            “I don’t have a pup, Kar, but I’m right terrified a milk,” Eridan says, feigning horror. “I’ll have to hold your hand if there’s any, God forbid, cream.” You put your hands in your pockets self consciously, and then immediately wish you hadn’t.

            “It’s just robots,” Equius says.

             It is, indeed, just robots. The basement is huge, a dimly lit cement stadium, filled with ghostly, half formed robots. Desks and tables line the back wall, and papers and charts are pinned from ceiling to floor. Your shouts and laughs echo off the far walls, and when Eridan backs into a pile of discarded metal scraps, it’s a cacophony. There’s a metal cage in the center of the floor, which Equius explains is for robot fighting.

            “Kar,” Eridan says. “You have to see Eq fight a robot. Have you ever seen Eq fight a robot?”

            “Uh,” you say, “No?”

            “It’s fuckin’ majestic,” Eridan says, hushing his voice dramatically. “I saw him do it once. Eq, Eq, Have you got a robot to fight? Tell me you do, an’ that you will fight said robot.”

            Equius ends up bashfully producing two robots, both as big as he is. He locks them in the cage with him and _annihilates_ them. You’re glad the ring is caged, because the metal carcasses spark and clang something terrible when they hit the cage sides. You laugh and whoop with Eridan as Equius dodges the most deadly fists you have probably ever seen. You shut up really fast when one gets him in the gut, and throws him back to the cage wall, but he picks himself up and decapitates the robot with one solid wrench. Equius is the strongest motherfucker you have ever laid eyes on, and you don’t think you ever appreciated it until now.

            The three of you end up around the bottle of scotch in the middle of the cleared off sparring stage. Eridan is leaning on your shoulder. He’s a little heavy to be doing so, but you don’t want him to stop. Sometimes his horn scrapes your cheek. You want to put your mouth on the base of it and make him sorry he left you. You are slowly approaching drunk and coming over was a great idea, and Eridan is going to stay on your shoulder and you are going to enjoy how warm he is. Sure, yes, he is literally wrecking your life and you can never sustain a relationship with him, and you’re not even factoring in whether or not he wants you at all, but…

            Yes, ok, actually, that sounds pretty bad. Your mood settles a little. And on top of that, it strikes you all of a sudden that you miss Loethe. You miss having a matesprit, who cared about you, and who might have stuck around. It was so much easier than sitting here with a sexy douchebag leaning on you like he owns the place. Of course, not even Loethe stuck around in the end. So you never really had the stability you wanted at all. That’s also horrible. Wow, nothing is actually that great. Did you like Loethe as much as you liked the idea of Loethe? You need more alcohol, this is not cutting it.

            “So where have you been?” Eridan asks, shifting off of you as you move to reach for the scotch. “Indisposed, my ass. Did you accidentally wear jeggings? Did Kanaya put you under house arrest?” He laughs at his own joke, which is stupid, so you laugh too.

            “Hold on,” you say, as you take a good long swig from the bottle. And when you’re done, you put the bottle down as firmly as you can. “I,” you declare, “was dumped! And you’ll excuse me if I decided to spend my time feeling wildly sorry for myself, all over my poor put-upon moirail.”

            “Holy shit!” Eridan says, “Woah, fuck!”

            Equius, who has gotten increasingly quiet since he began drinking, sort of nods, and you wonder if that’s sympathy. Probably. Equius is a good guy. You don’t appreciate him enough! You should invite him over sometime. Move aside, Feferi, shove over, Sollux, you are going to be _best friends_ with Equius. Before you can voice this newfound, drink-addled urge to bond with a sweaty lump of meat, Eridan says,

            “Really, though! Someone dumped you?” He looks incredulous, and in somewhat higher spirits than you feel you deserve for this revelation, but it’s ok.

            “Fuck yeah,” you tell him. “Big surprise, I know. Who could resist such a stellar catch? The entire empire is in shock. They’re going to put it in the news, ‘someone was dumb enough to not want this hunk of hot Vantas.’” You gestures towards yourself lavishly, because it was meant to be a joke, but the words come out a little more bitter than you want them to. And as you speak you can’t help directing them right at Eridan.

            “Talk about dumb,” Eridan says, laughing a little. “Fuckin’ hell! You’re, like…. wow, Kar.” He puts his chin in his hand and looks at you adoringly, with this goofy smile, like the sun is shining out of your ass. You remember this expression on his younger face, and it looks a bit out of place on him now. He looked at Feferi like this when she plucked her mandolin. And he looked at you like this in the early evenings, when you woke up. You want him to keep looking at you, and it makes you uneasy and sad.

            You decide you don’t really feel like talking about it anymore. “Sure,” you say, as neutrally as possible, and you go for the bottle again. Eridan grabs it after you, and you busy yourself with the hem of your sleeve. Eridan goes silent when he’s finished drinking, and you don’t look at him, in case he’s still looking at you. Equius takes out his phone and begins texting someone.

            “You know,” Eridan says, after a spell, “I’m a changed man, Kar.” You do look at him now, and he’s wiggling his eyebrows at you in good humor. “A very single changed man.”

            You stare at him for a minute, and mull over what he’s just said, because there’s a solid chance you misheard him. Your heart sort of lodges itself stubbornly in your throat. “Oh,” you say, finally.

            “You know, hah, if you ever needed someone else,” Eridan continues, and he laughs, but the good humor is sort of melting off of him and it is the most nervous laugh you have ever heard from his mouth and he is _serious._ He seriously just asked you out. He really just did that.

            And boy if that isn’t just the worst thing you’ve ever heard.

            You can’t stand it. Here you are, barely keeping your head above some horrible spell he’s managed to cast on you, trying to escape it for two long sweeps and then some, all your relationships falling down face first, and he thinks, oh yes, it is a great idea to ask Karkat out. You know what? You don’t care. You laugh too, meanly, because you haven’t got any humor in you. “Not on your life,” you say, and Eridan's smile freezes nervously.

            Equius gets up and wordlessly leaves the room, but you keep your eyes on Eridan, noting every discomfort he displays. You’re about to get up and leave as well, because being in the same room as Eridan is sounding increasingly horrible, when Eridan starts to speak, and you find that instead of leaving, you want to shout. You are _so angry_.

            “You don’t get to just have me back,” you say, and it echoes from the far off walls. “You don’t get to go off God knows where because you fucking _feel_ like it, and come back like I was waiting for you!” Eridan looks a little frightened, and you are fueling your own anger. “You left!” you shout, and a muddled chorus of tinny echoes repeats it. You left. “You made that choice! You fucked me over and then you _left_ me,” you left me, you left me, “and _now_ you want back in? What am I supposed to do with that, huh? What are you going to do, walk out as soon as I say yes?”

            “God, no,” Eridan whispers, his eyes flicking around nervously. “What? Kar,”

            “Shut up,” you snarl, and take one more solid swig from the bottle. You want to be a lot drunker than this.

            Eridan ignores you, like he has every other time you’ve ever told him to shut his horrible fanged trap. “What was I supposed to do,” he says, his voice coming out hushed and strangled. “How could I have stayed?”

            “Easily,” you hiss, and take another short sip, just to keep busy.

            “Kar, nobody wanted… you didn’t want me,” he says, and he sounds choked. His words roll off the basement walls. _Didn’t want him_? You always wanted him. That’s the biggest pile of shit you’ve ever heard of. The beast that took this shit was in fact elevated to the status of performance artist. You wanted him then, you want him now, and fuck you if some part of you hasn’t wanted him these past sweeps. You are fed up and done with this sordid affair, it has brought you nothing but consistent heartbreak and he couldn’t just stay gone, away from you, where you could nurse your wounds in peace. He had to come back and wave it right in your face. This is what you’re missing, the rest of the old exploded star, all the little stardust pieces landed right here in this man and as it turns out, he is an asshole.

            And he says you didn’t _want_ him.

            “Well fuck you too,” you say. You stand up, take a breath to compose yourself, fail to compose yourself, and throw the scotch as hard as you can onto the cold cement of Equius’ robot ring. It shatters discordantly, ringing through the warehouse of robotic husks. Eridan looks at you, terrified. It’s gratifying. And then you start towards the exit. You hear Eridan scuffle as he stands up, and his footsteps follow yours. You fumble in your pocket for your phone, and clumsily dial Kanaya. You angrily ignore Eridan as he keeps up easily with your strides, and wait as the phone rings. Kanaya picks up eventually, with a good-natured hello.

            “Kanaya,” you say shortly. “I’m going to need a ride home. Can you do me this one favor. Immediately. Thank you.”

            She agrees without questioning you, and you appreciate savagely that there is at least one person in your life who is not a complete and utter moron. As soon as you hang up you wish you were still talking to her, because Eridan begins to talk as soon as he’s not interrupting Kanaya.

            “I couldn’t a stayed,” he repeats, and you wish, you _wish_ you could walk faster than he can. “You hated me, come on. Feferi, too. I wasn’t dumb, Kar, well, I was, I was so fuckin’ stupid. We covered that, I know. I mean I had enough sense to know there was nothin’ left a me with you.” You finally clear the endless space of the basement, and stomp your way up the stairs and through the main house. You don’t know what you’re going to do when you get outside. “I may not a quite gotten the whole picture just yet, but Kar, I knew I’d fucked up with you. You an’ Fef.”

            You throw open the front door and step out into the cool air. The sun hasn’t begun to rise, yet, and everything’s still calm under the heavy moonlight. It doesn’t fit with how you feel. “Kar,” Eridan says, one more time. “I _couldn’t_ a stayed.”

            “Yes, you could’ve!” you finally shout, with nowhere else to run to. “You could’ve stayed! For me! For Feferi! We would have given you all the shit in the world, Eridan, we would have ripped you to pieces, but by the salted Empress’s royal anal beads, I would have _kept_ you!” You push your fist firmly against his chest, not a punch, not a jab. Just a connection. “I would have _fixed you_ ,” you say. “And we would have _worked_.”

            He gapes at you, shaking his head. “Kar, it wouldn’t a worked,”

            “Well leaving certainly didn’t,” You tell him. “It fucking sucked.” You pull your hand back from his chest, uncurl your fist, and slap your palm back down. “It sucked. I loved you _so much_.” You want to explain, to implant in him, how much it really did suck. You didn’t even really consider yourself free flush for half a sweep, because you kept sort of halfheartedly wishing he was just going to come back. Say it was all a joke, and he was sorry and everything could go back to the way it was. But you don’t think you can express it. “We were stardust,” you say instead.

            His eyes look watery, and if he cries, you are going to cry, so you look down at your fingers spread out on his shirt.

            “I thought you loved me,” you admit to his chest.

            “I did,” he says immediately. “Oh, Kar.” You feel the words somewhere in your gastric sac, but you can’t tell if they hurt. They’re just _there_. You keep your eyes trained on his buttons. “I loved you every single day. I missed you like a fuckin’ heel to my gut, Kar. I missed you on the marshes, I missed you when I went to the markets, I would see these horrible little gadgets and think, Kar woulda laughed at this.” What you drank before smashing the bottle is finally catching up with you, but it’s not helping. You made a bad choice with that. “I would miss you when I went to sleep, an’ I would go fishin’ an’ just sit there missin’ you, an’ I used to bookmark passages in stuff I read that I thought you woulda liked.”

            He used to do that when you were on Alternia. Jokes and facts he’d found particularly interesting. Whole paragraphs on things you didn't give two shits about. He'd read them out loud. They were always stupid.

            “But it wouldn’t a worked if I’d stayed,” he says. “The only reason I got around to really actually thinkin’ about how I fucked up was because you were gone. An’ I just thought a lot about how I didn’t have you, or Fef, ‘cause a what I’d done. So I had to leave. I _had_ to.” He sniffs, and you pull your hand back into a fist on his shirt, anchoring yourself to him.

            “I changed my mind on some things,” he adds. “But loved you the whole time. Couldn’t a stopped if I’d tried. An’, I know you don’t want it, I just think you should know, I still love you. It’s so good havin’ you around, I keep havin’ to pinch myself. An’ I just keep bein’ flushed to steam about you.”

            You make an attempt to confess to him that you do want it, because he has to know that somehow, your common sense took leave of absence and you’re still stupid for him. But you just start crying instead. You must finally be properly drunk, because you just don’t care. You let go of his shirt and sit down to sob on the ground, keeping your head down to minimize the damage. After a minute, Eridan settles himself down beside you, and sits there next to you as you wait for Kanaya. “Stardust flush,” he says.

_ _ _

            You get up early the next evening. Your plan was to sleep forever, or at least for a full week, but once you wake up, you can’t get the sopor slime to pull you back. So that’s it. You’re up. You wash, get fully dressed, and decide you owe Kanaya some pancakes. Lemon pancakes. A million of them, brought to her on a tray. She found you last night giving a big fat middle finger to your dignity, hunched over sniveling on Equius’ front lawn, and didn’t even blink.

            Well, ok, yes, there was a fair amount of blinking, and some snarling, and a good measure of Eridan being very frightened, but Kanaya’s still been there for you an awful lot lately.

            At any rate, pancakes it is. You rummage around the kitchen until you’re sure you’ve got all the ingredients, find a wrinkly cookbook under some fruit, and begin to slowly leaf through the last morning.

            So you guess Eridan’s flushed for you. Huh.

            It sits warmly in your stomach as you throw pancake batter together. You’re not really sure how to measure most of the ingredients, but you figure, how badly can you really ruin this? It’s pancakes.

            You stir the gloop in the bottom of the bowl you found. Flushed for you the whole time, apparently. Seems a little obvious now. And he thought you and Feferi didn’t want anything to do with him. That’s pretty stupid.

            You feel sort of okay.

            Kanaya comes into the kitchen once the smell of pancakes makes it around the hive, with her darker dressing gown thrown on. It’s maybe the second least threatening article of clothing she owns. It could almost be described as understated. You like it on her, it’s all Kanaya, no extra pomp.

            “Good evening,” you say, and you gesture to the stack of pancakes that are off the griddle. “I made pancakes.”

            “Good,” Kanaya says, “I was in the mood for food that was not prepared very well.”

            “That was so bland,” you tell her. “Have I taught you nothing about insults?” Kanaya ignores you and goes to the cupboard to grab a plate. “Oh no you don’t,” you say. “Just use your hands. It won’t kill you. Get some butter on your fingers.”

            “You’re chipper,” she says, and she picks a pancake delicately off of the serving plate.

            “Yeah, well, can’t sit on a couch forever,” you say, blatantly ignoring that that had very recently been an important goal for you.

            “You had a good night?” Kanaya asks, sitting on a stool by the counter.

            “It was alright,” you say. You consider it, and then add, “Turns out Eridan’s flushed for me.”

            “Oh,” Kanaya says. She doesn’t look very surprised. “You look pleased.”

            “Yeah, I guess so,” you say. “He says he was the whole time, and he got it into his head that I broke it off.”

            “Really?” Kanaya says, a little more interested. “That’s horribly ironic.”

            “Tell me about it,” you say.

            “Makes sense, though,” she says thoughtfully. “I always thought it was weird that he just ran away like that. Did you get back together with him?”

            “Nope.” You shrug. “But maybe later. I haven’t decided.”

            Kanaya laughs. “You spend five sweeps with a man, you think you know him, and then he turns around and acts totally normal for once. Are you okay?”

            “Yeah, actually,” you say.

            You’re never really calm about relationships, not when you’re alone, and being with Kanaya counts as alone. So you’re not sure what’s going on now. You could get angry that you spent the past sweeps thinking Eridan didn’t give two shits about you, but you’re not really feeling it. You guess you could freak out about what to do next, but Eridan’s not here now, you can make decisions later.

            “It’s a miracle,” Kanaya says. “Another miracle, you made pretty good pancakes. Are they lemon?”

            “Yes,” you say proudly. “I figured out what lemon zest was, just for you.” You flip the last of them onto the serving plate, turn off the burner, and bring the pancakes over to the counter where Kanaya is sitting. Even more mercifully, you bring her a plate and a fork. And some sugar syrup for yourself.

            “To ask the most sensitive question I can, what about Loethe?” Kanaya says. She washes her hands in the sink before happily forking pancakes onto her plate. “Are you over it already? And does the reason smell like low quality hair gel?”

            “You never ask the sensitive thing,” you tell her, “that’s why I need you around. I miss Loethe, but it’s just a breakup.”

            “My dumb breadbasket, did you or did you not spend three sweeps freaking out over a breakup?”

            “The committee can neither confirm nor deny this accusation,” you say, gesturing with a pancake. “But it’s fine. I’ll see Loethe around. I think she’s black for Qulerre, maybe if I set them up it’ll put us back on decent terms.

            “Ash?” Kanaya asks, her eyebrows jumping.

            “God no,” you say. “Nothing nearly that far, can you imagine? She dumps me red because she’s pale for me, and then I come on to her ash. Like my life isn’t enough of a soap opera.” Kanaya chuckles and goes back to her pancakes. You spend the rest of breakfast amiably discussing the most annoying habits of Kanaya’s PA.

_ _ _

            That night, Eridan comes to visit. Kanaya went into the office a couple hours ago and you’ve been playing games online with Sollux. He’s kicking your ass, per usual, so you’re more than happy to stop the game to answer the door.

            You’re surprised to see Eridan on your doorstep. It’s unexpected, you thought after last night he’d probably just leave you alone for a while. He hasn’t trolled you or anything, either. He just showed up. When you think about it, you didn’t know he knew where you lived. He’s never come over before. He’s well groomed, his hair swept back as artfully as ever and his pants black, which is more black than he usually wears. He looks good, he fills out his shirt, and you admire him without guilt.

            He’s also nervous. The air is filled with static, and your hair prickles.

            “Kar,” he begins immediately, pulling at his fingers.

            “Wow, at ease, private,” you tell him. “Do you want to come in?” You don’t feel nearly as uneasy as you thought you would, whenever you had to confront him. He’s clearly got something to say, but that isn’t making you nervous either. God, you should make a point of always being okay with stuff. Why do you consistently have to be such a raging hangnail?

            “Um,” he says, and you stand aside to push the invitation. He steps indoors.

            “Hang on a minute,” you say, and you shoot Sollux a text to let him know you won’t be coming back to the game.

            “Kar,” Eridan begins again. You lead him a little further into the hive. “Look. I wanted to apologize for last night.”

            “Don’t bother,” you tell him, but he ignores you.

            “I shouldn’t a said anythin’. About w—wantin’ you flush.” Your sweater is sticking, there’s so much static. “That wasn’t anythin’ like appropriate.”

            “It’s ok,” you say.

            “Really? Good, I mean, that’s really good,” he says. “I want to be friends with you, Kar. I do.” He’s twirling his brass ring on his finger like he can start a fire. He keeps eye contact with you, though, and his face is insistently earnest. “If that’s alright with you an’ all.”

            Is it? You give him another once over. There he is, handsome, dumb as a brick, and hanging on your reply. You didn’t really know you’d already made up your mind about Eridan until now, but you guess that explains how nice your evening has been.

            “You are the straight up stupidest short circuit I have ever seen,” you tell him. “I am genuinely amazed every time I see you’ve got your shirt on straight.”

            Eridan laughs, relieved. “Okay, yeah, I sure am that, Kar,” he says.

            “Just truly, enormously thickheaded. Aggressively so,” you continue. He’s still just smiling at you, so you suppose you’re going to have to be a little more direct. You step towards him to get his face in your hands, and kiss him hard. He makes a startled noise, and a couple of sparks pop against your cheeks, but he catches on quick. He kisses you back ferociously, and with a small, perfect moan. He tastes like chapstick, and smells like Eridan.

            You open your mouth to lick at his lips, and he lets you in immediately. You slide your hands around to the back of his head to pull his lips closer, and he wraps his arms around your back. His tongue slips into your mouth, and mm, _yes_. You want this. You are the king of great decisions.

            You kiss him for a long time, standing in the hall. You'll stop soon, you think, more than once. Just another moment. He’s breathing heavily when you do pull away, his face tinting mustard, his lips dark, and it is a sight to behold. You keep your hands on his neck, because you simply aren't done touching him. “ _Kar_ ,” he says, like you hold the keys to the kingdom. And will you look at that; here is the kingdom, stirring right between your legs. How convenient!

            You wet your lips. “Eridan, do you want to move this party to my respiteblock? Because Kanaya will murder me with a chainsaw if I stain this rug.”

            “Uh,” he says, eyes bright, “D’you mean, uh.” He pushes a bit of stray hair back into place. “Yes. Yes, yeah, definitely, I do. Wow.”

            You get him into your block (locking the door, in case Kanaya decides to come home early) and take your time stripping him out of his well-kept clothes. He persuades you out of your shirt as well, with his mouth on you the whole time, or else he’s spewing shit about being in love with you, which feels so good that you don’t know which you prefer. When he is stunningly naked below you, you take your time finding out how he has changed, and where he is the same. You spend time on his neck, and find all the old buttons to press. It’s like riding a bike, except your bicycle is flushed, already unsheathed and clutching you like you’ll evaporate. By far the sexiest vehicle you’ve ever personally appraised.

            Eridan is fumbling with the hem of your pants. “Kar,” he says breathily, “Do you m—” you cut him off by rolling your body down on his bulge. He moans beautifully, and you find that if Eridan was trying to undress you, he had the right idea. Your pants have nothing to add to this conversation. They only become increasingly uncomfortable as the rest of your bulge slips out of its sheathe.

            You find out precisely what Eridan was after when his psiionics tug at you, and you’re pulled off of him altogether. He sits up and pulls your pants off of you while you’re suspended in air, surrounded by the mild buzz of the yellow teal lightshow. It’s a strange combination of startling and familiar; Eridan is the only psiionic you’ve ever been close to, and you haven’t been lifted like this since you were on Alternia. You stop caring immediately when Eridan begins pressing hot kisses down your bulge, until he’s buried his tongue in your nook.

            “Oh, _fuck_ ,” you keen. He plays you very well, he knows what you like. It’s hard to stay quiet after that. You grab his horns to hang on for the ride, and he hums onto the base of your bulge when you squeeze them. “God. _Eridan_.”

            He doesn’t let you down until the third time you’ve asked, and you’re a pusher’s tick from coming all over his face. As pretty as he looks in green, you have other goals. You get your hands on his bulge as soon as you’re back on top of him, and he whimpers. He’s beautiful; you’re going to fuck him senseless.

            When you push into his nook, he moans like he’ll come apart. You hope he’s close, because you’re not going to last very long, with his cries right against your ear. He claws and clutches at your back, pulling you closer against him, and when his bulge winds its way into your own nook, you curse into his shoulder. It’s perfect, hot and slick.

            You come first, choking Eridan’s name into his skin, spilling inside of him. He gasps, holding you—if possible—tighter, and follows soon after.

            “O-ooh, Kar, Karkat,” he moans, digging his claws into your back as he empties himself into your genetic material bladder. Sparks snap between his horns, and you tuck your head into the crook of his neck. Mmm. “Wow,” Eridan murmurs, and his lips press against one of your horns.

            “Yeah,” you agree, and Eridan shuffles you up a bit with sparks so he can kiss your mouth. You’re going to have to talk to him about not throwing you around like this, you’re not used to it anymore and it’s a horrible advantage, but right now you think you are busy.

            It’s another couple minutes of lazy kissing before your genetic material bladder gets uncomfortable enough for you to shake Eridan’s arms off of you. “There should be a bucket under the platform,” you tell him, “can you just psychic it up here?”

            He can’t find it, so you have to get it yourself, and what is the point of having a psiionic around if he can’t pick up everything for you? You remember when you turn around and get another eyeful of him sprawled out loosely on your platform. Fuck, yeah.

            You both deposit material into the bucket in turn, and you have Eridan set it somewhere out of the way to be dealt with later. He then descends on you again with kisses like butterflies settling on your skin. It’s comfortable. No one goes overboard on affection like Eridan. You’ve remembered it as cloying, from time to time, or suffocating. But you like it, because as a general rule you are an insecure, sentimental piece of shit. Each kiss is a little message saying I’m here, I’m here.

            He sits with you, resting his lips on your shoulder in silence. He’s gone quiet again. You wonder what he thinks about when he’s quiet. Marshes? Maybe nothing at all. Is he listening?

            “Do you hear ghosts?” you ask.

            “Not now,” Eridan says, shifting his head so his cheek is against you. “No one’s here. Just us.” It’s very matter of fact. He was never particularly successful at pretending he didn’t mind the voices he heard on Alternia, he’d bristle if you so much as brought it up. He couldn’t stand them.

            “What did you do on your swamp planet, when you heard them?”

            He doesn’t hesitate or avoid the question. He just shrugs. “Not much. Headphones, sometimes. The ghosts weren’t so bad.”

            “Was it a quiet planet?”

            “Like you wouldn’t fuckin’ believe,” Eridan says. “An’ it never helped that I lived in the middle of fuck all nowhere. God fuckin’ forbid I ever dropped anythin’, the crash’d scare me half dead. But you get used to it.”

            “I guess so,” you say. “Although I never thought I’d see the day where you calmed down about the dead.”

            “Well,” Eridan says, “It beat bein’ alone with myself, sometimes.”

            “I’m still in love with you,” you say. Eridan lifts his head to look at you, and takes your jaw in his hand.

            “Kar,” he breathes, like that says it all. You suppose there’s really nothing to say in particular, so that more or less covers it.

            “Yeah,” you say. “I don’t get it either.”

            “Are you really?”

            “What would be the point of lying to you now?”

            “Say it again,” he says. “Tell me again.”

            “I love you,” you say. “Flushed. It’s embarrassing.”

            “It’s more’n I could a hoped for,” Eridan sighs, keeping his hand on your face. “I can’t even tell you, Kar.”

            “Shut up, you dumb sap,” you tell him, “do you want to be my matesprit or not.”

            “More’n the world,” Eridan says.

            “Then less talking, more kissing.” He pecks your lips just once, and you fight to keep the corners of your mouth from sneaking up your cheeks, you don't have time for his tiny-kisses horseshit.

            “I looked up Eq so I could find you, you know,” Eridan says. “I wasn’t gonna look for anyone at all. I wasn’t plannin’ on it. But I heard you were a sergeant, I just overheard the right conversation, you know? An’ then I just couldn’t stop thinkin’ about you.”

            “What, were you planning to seduce me the whole time?” you ask. “Because fuck you very much, I’ve had bullet wounds less taxing than you.”

            Eridan winces apologetically. “Course not, Kar. I just missed you.”

            “Well, it worked, and I may never forgive you for that,” you tell him. “How dare you.”

            “Well,” he says, kind of slowly. “Maybe you could forgive me for some other stuff, instead?”

            “No fucking way,” you say. “You’re in the doghouse, for, like, ever. You owe me a million pancake breakfasts, and probably a foot rub.”

            “Kar,” Eridan says. “What can I do? I’ll prove it to you, that I’m proper sorry.”

            You’ve already forgiven him. You don’t know when it was, or why you thought it was a good idea, but you just don’t care. “I’ll forgive you if you don’t leave me,” you say, and Eridan pulls you tightly into his strong arms.

            “Just you try to keep me away,” he says. “Just you try.”

            Maybe it’s not the most advisable relationship move you’ve ever made. You certainly won’t be in a hurry to tell Feferi about this one, and god forbid Sollux ever get wind. But you kiss Eridan again anyways, and it feels good. His hands are on your back. You’re not scared of a goddamn thing. What could be worse than what's already happened? Literally nothing. You could love Eridan until your own planet has exploded, and the cosmic debris has formed into something else. Next thing you know, your horrible matesprit will actually try to become a pirate, and get swindled for everything he owns, and then join a murder circus, and you’ll probably just be that guy who’s still dating him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I call this chapter "karkat and kanaya discuss everything before it happens so there's very little suspense" 
> 
> anyways that's the story. eridan and karkat are soulmates forever: the novella (now in bloodswap flavor). there isn't much to say about it, but an anon on tumblr asked me about eridan's motivations for trying to kill vriska, and if you are sitting there tapping your fingers on your laptop and thinking wow what the heck, that makes no sense, why would eridan just... DO that?? then you can check this out. poidkea.tumblr.com/post/88458217377/i-dont-know-if-youve-already-explained-this-and-maybe hopefully it helps.

**Author's Note:**

> eridan practiced everything he said to karkat in his head like fifty times beforehand. he said it in the mirror once. 'yes', he thought. 'this is perfect and karkat will understand immediately that everything is fixed now.' 
> 
> For your reference- in this AU, the blood colors are as follows: Equius has bright mutant red blood, Gamzee has normal red blood, Feferi has brown blood, Aradia has jade blood, Tavros has teal blood, Sollux has cerulean blood, Nepeta has blue blood, Terezi has violet blood and Vriska has tyrian blood. 
> 
> The second chapter won't be too long, I'm editing it now. The rating will be adjusted accordingly.


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